Threads Of Darkness
by Lord Zeuss
Summary: Kono returns: As the first signs of division begin to appear within the crew, the Ebon Hawk is captured by a Sith ship, and the truth - too much and not enough - is revealed to everyone. *Chapter 3 contains some disturbing violence!*
1. Chapter 1

"Carth, I need to speak with you."

"Go ahead, Bastila. I'm all ears."

"I think perhaps it would be best if you altered course and headed for Dantooine."

"Would you care to tell me why? Oh, let me guess, Jedi stuff?"

"Well, yes. The truth is, I can no longer trust myself to be able to guide Kono in the teachings of the Jedi. The Force knows I have done my best, but trying to instill the mandates of the Jedi Code in him is like attempting to move a mountain with one's bare hands. Worse, it seems some of his own doctrines are beginning to affect me. I think it would be best if we both spent some more time with the Masters, apart from each other. I'm afraid the Council sent me off before I was ready and I had too much pride in my heart to see that."

"Alright, you're finally starting to make some sense. I was a little worried back on Kashyyyk I was going to have to blow the whistle on the whole mission, what with the way you and Kono... well, I guess you remember all that."

"Yes, Carth, I do. As much as I may not want to, I do. This mission is important, perhaps the most important of our lives, but as a representative of the Jedi Order I can't risk letting another Jedi fall to the Dark Side."

"I know what you mean. I have my own doubts about that guy. I mean, don't get me wrong, he was a great help on Taris, but I've never liked the way he tends to do things. It's like he's at war with anyone and everyone he thinks might be against him."

"It is that ruthless calculation and determination that makes him so incredibly dangerous. I fear without realizing it, he is already become a pawn to the Dark Side. If he were to discover this... Carth, we can't let--"

"Don't worry about, Bastila, I'll change course."

"While I think I will continue to worry, I thank you, Carth. Thank you for listening to me."

"No problem."

Kono's datapad beeped. He turned from his lightsabre practice, momentarily deactivating the three remote droids he was drilling with, and examined the small device lying on the workbench. It was Icon's signal; Carth was trying to make an unscheduled course change. He wanted to go to Dantooine for some reason.

Quickly, Kono instructed Icon to block the course change. He wouldn't have Carth taking matters into his own hands, not while they were so close to finding the last pieces that would reveal the answer to the puzzling enigma that was the Star Forge. Carth was going to have to explain his actions and come up with a good reason for them to take such a detour.

He heard footsteps nearing the garage, set the datapad down, putting it in a sleep state to hide Icon's presence. The crew didn't need to know about the ancient AI, at least not yet. Looking up, he saw it was Bastila. He definitely didn't want her knowing about Icon.

As she turned the corner and came into view, Kono deactivated his lightsabre, its black-pierced violet blade extinguishing itself. "Something up, Bastila?"

"You and I should talk, Kono." Her face was unreadable, a blank mask that showed nothing. Nothing except for the twitch in her right eyebrow that told him she upset and skillfully hiding it.

"I've been thinking things over, things concerning you and I," she began.

"Go on," he urged.  
In an effort to still her fidgeting hands, she put them behind her back. "You and I are bonded, I recognize that. However, it has come to my attention in recent days that perhaps we've been explaining away too many things by using that excuse. Kashyyyk, even if it may have been a victory in name, was an unmitigated disaster.

"In all my years as a Jedi I have never so fully taken leave of my senses as I did in the Shadowlands. You executed prisoners of war without hearing or trial. We carried out a massacre together to overthrow a ceremonial Wookiee tradition. These actions are not befitting us as members of the Jedi Order. Meditation on these things has told me that you and I should perhaps not be on this mission together. I'm sure the wisdom of the Council will be able to make that determination as surely as I have done."

Inwardly, Kono sighed in frustration. Once again, Bastila had "seen the light" and undone whatever learning she might have done. Instead of opening her mind to a world of greater possibility, she instead chose to remain shackled to the misused, misinterpreted, "divine wisdom" of the Jedi Code, the whole Jedi Code, and nothing but the Jedi Code.

"Bastila, have you ever considered the possibility that what I do is for a reason? The Jedi Code can't give me all the answers because it denies reality. I live in reality and have to structure myself to deal with that fact. I had hoped you would see that. The galaxy is not a nice place, and it doesn't care about some impossible, utopian ideal such as the Jedi Code. Yes, it has its place within the sheltered walls of an Academy or a Temple, where you can shut out the world outside and deny the truth, but out in the real world you have to make your own decisions.

"I can't speak for you in the Shadowlands. That was your choice and your error. But do not ask me to have mercy for those who would rape the galaxy or betray their own people for their selfish pleasure. What we did was right."

"Kono, the Jedi Code is everything we must live by, or we fall."

"Have I fallen, then? Am I an agent of the Dark Side?" To this, Bastila had no ready response. Her facade cracked as she groped for words, showing for a brief moment how frightened she was inside.

"I don't know. I can only hope the Council will." She turned away from him. "I asked Carth to change our course to make for Dantooine. We need to set things straight."

"There's something else, isn't there?" Kono had sensed from the beginning that she was hiding something from him. It stood between them now like a third person.

Still not facing him, she crossed her arms and leaned against a doorway, resting the side of her head on the hard surface. "I had a vision."

"What kind of vision?" Kono asked nonchalantly, covering his alarm. "Another Star Map?"

"No," she said, turning to fix him with a very meaningful stare. "It was a quiet house, suddenly consumed by a fire. Also a suddenly shattered mirror, reflecting my likeness in a thousand tiny images."

On the surface, Kono could make no sense whatsoever of what she said, and was tempted to think it might simply be more random images of the mind. But he knew better than that, there was still more to it.

"These visions are somehow tied to you and this mission. And I fear you and I will both be destroyed if their meaning comes to pass."

An instant after Bastila had finished speaking, they were suddenly, violently thrown forward. Batila tumbled down the hallway and Kono crashed into the bulkhead in front of him, his head snapping back onto a bare, protruding rivet in the wall and blinding him with dizzying, crippling pain. It was like every headache he'd ever had in his life all lumped together into an indescribable hammer of agony pounding on the inside of his skull. His head felt like a block of granite.

Kono found himself on the floor, his head lying in a rapidly growing puddle of hot blood. Bastila was trying to help him up, every tiny little movement of his head sending both ice cold and white hot lances of pain stabbing behind his eyes. He couldn't see very well, and his ears felt like they were filled with cotton, muffling whatever Bastila was saying into unintelligible sounds.

She tried to get him to stand, but he couldn't hold his feet and fell back to the floor, his head ringing with thunderous agony.

Kono suddenly felt a warm, soothing trickle of power flowing from Bastila's hands to the back of his skull. With desperate urgency, he shoved her away, shutting off the healing touch. That was the last thing he wanted her doing.

"Don't... put the Force... near my head," he managed to get out, oblivious to Bastila's shocked expression, before the sudden exertion cause him to lose consciousness completely.

It was only a few moments later that his eyes opened again to find Jolee above him, rubbing raw kolto on Kono's bleeding head with his fingers. The relentless pain eased somewhat, allowing his mind to clear and his thoughts to reform.

He hauled himself into an upright sitting position, looked at Bastila and Jolee. Jolee had an egg-shaped lump on his forehead.

"What happened?"

"My boy, you've fractured your skull, given yourself a concussion," Jolee responded. He frowned. "And then you told Bastila not to heal it. Want to tell us why? Cracks in the skull are serious business."

Kono grunted. Of course they were. "Injuries like that need to heal naturally, on their own. I take them very seriously. But thank you both for your assistance." He got to his feet. "Now what is the situation?"

This time Bastila gave the answer. "We've run into trouble, Kono. A Sith Interdictor ship pulled us out of hyperspace."

That certainly explained a lot. Sudden, unassisted hyperspace exits were ugly and known to tear apart weaker ships.

"Then we have a lot of problems," he concluded. That was actually an understatement. They had a lot of very large problems. "What's Carth doing?"

Bastila wrung her heads. "He has the ship's engines in full reverse, but it won't hold their tractor beams forever. He's bought us some time, at least."

Kono knew from experience that operating on borrowed time was never fun. Operating injured on borrowed time was even less fun.

"Alright, group meeting," he ordered. "Now!"

* * *

He'd ordered everyone into the main hold, and everyone turned out. Before Kono were his entire crew; Juhani and Canderous stood immediately beside him, Bastila, Jolee, Carth, Mission, Zaalbar, and the droids to either side of the central table in the hold. Juhani had a nasty scrape on her arm and Mission a bleeding lip, but that was the extent of the crew's injuries.

Kono leaned heavily on the table's surface with his arms, hanging his head on his shoulder to reduce the unceasing pain still radiating from his own injury. Blood drops fell from his red-soaked neck onto the table as he leaned over it, about to give more orders.

"Status report, Carth."

"We were yanked from hyperspace transit by a Sith Interdictor. They caught us in a tractor beam." Kono noticed an uncharacteristic glower on Carth's face; his anger was boiling to the surface.

"It's the _Leviathan_," he said venomously.

"Significance?" Kono pressed.

"The _Leviathan_ is Saul Karath's vessel." The man's name was spat from Carth's mouth like a vile oath. "The same Saul Karath who turned over an entire Republic fleet to Revan and Malak, bombed Telos, killed my wife and son. He's a murderer, a coward, and a traitor. But he's also a brilliant strategist. I ought to know; he taught me everything I know about being a soldier.

"Saul will probably want Bastila alive so he can turn her over to Malak, so I don't think we need to worry about him killing us; we're too important. But when we escape, I want to be the one to kill him."

Bastila clucked in exasperation. "Talk of an escape is somewhat premature, don't you think, Carth?"

Kono held up his hand. "That's what this is about. We need to formulate our plans now, while we're still free and have the luxury of planning. As soon as this ship touches down in a Sith hangar, we need to have a plan ready for our eventual escape. If Malak or the Sith discover our true mission then it's all over."

"I agree," Bastila said, "we mustn't let that happen."

"The way I see it," Kono posited, "the less of us they can get their hands on the better. Some of us need to avoid capture. That gives us a few options." Already, his mind was racing furiously to put pieces together. A simple escape wouldn't be enough, recapture too great of a risk. Once free, they would have to do the unthinkable and attack. An enemy scrambling to counter a move it didn't understand was always the most vulnerable.

"Canderous and Juhani can do this," he announced, turning to the two. "Canderous, your healing implants can keep you alive after cardiac arrest, correct? Low-level stasis, if I'm not mistaken?"

The burly Mandalorian nodded his head. "As long as you don't overdo it."

"Good, hopefully it doesn't go that far. But I will need to put a few shots in you, get the Sith to send you to the morgue instead of the cells."

Grasping his plan, Canderous grinned. "Less security in a morgue."

Kono returned the grin. "Exactly. It will then be up to you to get some explosives, as much as you can find."

"And what of me, Kono?" Juhani asked.

"I would trust no one else but you to remain hidden from the Sith while they search the ship. It is imperative that you not be caught, because you will need to follow and eventually free Carth, Bastila, and me. I expect they will keep us separate from the others, and under much heavier guard since we are the most important to the Sith. I know you can do this."

She answered him with firm conviction in her golden eyes. "I will not fail you."

Nodding gratefully to her, Kono picked out another face, another asset, another friend he had to use. "Mission, if there's anyone who can break out of a Sith confinement cell, it's you." The Twi'lek girl beamed with pride, putting a brave face on the trepidation and fear that undoubtedly gripped her. "You'll need to free the others, find supplies, and then link up with Canderous. Once we're all free, some of you will need to get to the _Hawk_, and Mission I need you to go with Canderous to plant explosive charges in the ship's reactor room."

Mission's eyes lit with comprehension. "We're going to blow it up!"

He smiled at her. "Yes, that's right. In the meantime, Carth, Bastila, Juhani, and I will head for the bridge to free the _Hawk_."

"And then I'll kill Saul," Carth growled.

"Be careful, Carth," Bastila admonished in a warning tone. "Giving in to revenge will not erase what he's done, nor will it bring back your family."

"Don't worry, Bastila. I'm not gonna let vengeance get in the way of our escape. But if I get the chance, I will make Saul pay for what he's done. It's the least I can do for all the millions he's killed."

Kono saw enough rage to take on the whole Sith Empire written on Carth's face, despite insistence of a higher morality. He ached for revenge, as he should. Sometimes revenge was the most justice that could ever be served.

He looked about at the faces of his allies. "If that's it then, we have captivity to prepare for." There were grim nods all around.

Wincing from the pain in his head, Kono picked up a blaster from the table before him and aimed at Canderous' chest. The Mandalorian gave him a nod and he fired. Blaster bolts ripped into his flesh.

* * *

Even despite the _Hawk_'s mighty resistance, the Sith tractor beams pulled it inexorably towards the massive Interdictor, eventually depositing it inside a secure hangar and locking it behind magnetic clamps. Power dampeners cut power to the engines that still squealed in protest and the _Ebon Hawk_ sat helpless, surrounded on all sides by Sith firepower.

It was only a matter of minutes before Sith technicians were on the scene, working to pry open the cargo ramp for the waiting scores of silver-armored soldiers gathered in the hangar to storm aboard.

Inside, Kono watched with anticipation the crack of the door widening. He held his lightsabre at the ready, a finger flick away from igniting its black and violet blade. The racing of his heart matched the pounding in his head. Sweat collected on his brow as the door ever-so-slowly inched open.

Suddenly there was movement. An object flew through the still-narrow opening.

With reflexes slower than usual but still adequate, Kono caught the flying sphere in a Force net. It took him a moment to realize what it was--a moment he could ill-afford to lose.

It was a gas grenade.

Before he could hurl it away, back out of the ship, it exploded in his face. Instantly he felt the effects of the powerful paralyzing agent. His flesh tingled with numbness and his limbs refused to move. Kono collapsed to his knees, still grasping his unlit lightsabre, and the cargo ramp crashed open.

His lightsabre finally ignited. A desperate forward lunge that was more of a fall than anything else, managed to slice through the knees of an advancing Sith soldier. As he went down, he felt a boot strike the side of his face, followed by a quick series of kicks to his ribs and stomach. Crowding around him with fists, rifle butts, and cudgels, the Sith soldiers rained his unmoving body with blow after blow.

Kono cursed himself for not anticipating poison gas.

A club hit him squarely in the back of the head, right on top of his existing skull fracture, and consciousness left him in a rush, inflicting one last stabbing icicle of pain that lingered in his mind long after he was lost to the world.


	2. Chapter 2

"I wouldn't suggest you try to move too quickly. This particular sedative can cause quite strong nausea, I'm told."

Carth opened his eyes painfully at the grating sound of the infuriatingly noble voice. He always thought that Sith would all have intrinsically evil-sounding voices--a deep rumble, a hissing rasp, or a machine-like drone. Saul Karath's voice was none of those. Ruefully, Carth decided such a view of the Sith was foolishly naive.

With a look around, he thought if this was a cell then it was the most accommodating he'd ever seen. Instead of bare, unadorned durasteel panels, the walls were covered in magnificent paintings and decorated with expensive drapery. The floor was covered in rich carpets and furnished with such luxurious furniture it would have satisfied the Queen of Naboo. Topping it all of was a glittering crystal chandelier that was in itself a work of art.

Instead of being surrounded by grim-faced Sith torturers, it was just him and Saul sitting across from one another on kingly chairs.

"Odd place for an interrogation, don't you think, Saul?" Carth asked sardonically. His wrists weren't even bound, though his head was pounding something awful and he did indeed feel like hurling his last two meals. Soiling Saul's fineries would almost be worth it.

Saul Karath's unremarkable, but nevertheless imposing, face took on an expression of patience. "I'm quite disappointed in you, Carth. It's been years since we saw each other last and you assume the first thing on my mind would be how I might torture you?" He shook his head of graying hair sadly. "We're old friends, Carth. Can we not at least talk as civilized gentlemen?"

Carth's bewilderment at his odd predicament had evaporated. He glared at Saul. "You lost that right a long time ago, Saul. No civilized man would cowardly betray his friends and family and bomb a civilian target without warning or provocation."

"Telos was a necessary sacrifice. Darth Malak would not accept that I had truly given up on the Republic until I proved my loyalty."

"Necessary? Did you ever even bother to check how many millions of innocent people you killed just so the Sith would let you into their little elite circle? You destroyed an entire generation of Telosians!"

Carth remembered seeing the casualty lists, their appalling lengths kept growing even after he was too sickened to pay attention anymore. He remembered sifting through piles of carbonized human remains in the ashes of decimated dwellings, digging through heaps of dismembered limbs and ravaged corpses, hoping against hope to find Morgana and Dustil alive, only to have that hope crushed before his eyes. They never even found Dustil's body.

Unable to stand the sight of Saul anymore, Carth leaped from his seat and lunged for him. Unfortunately, he severely overestimated his strength, and underestimated how nauseous he still was. Halfway across the glass sitting table that stood between them, Carth collapsed heavily when Saul's quick fist slugged him in the face. The glass shattered underneath him as he fell to the floor vomiting.

"I treat you with courtesy and you insult me. I try to put you at ease and you insist on dredging up the past. Who is the unreasonable one?"

Bleeding from the broken glass, his jacket soaked in bile, Carth tried to ignore Saul's condescending words.

"I am trying to extend to you a personal favor, Carth. Not many are offered a chance such as this. Were I one of the other admirals, you would most likely be dead by now, as they would be far more interested in your Jedi companions. You've made quite a nuisance of yourself to the Sith, Darth Malak himself has ordered your death."

"What are you getting at, Saul?" Carth asked in irritation, managing to haul himself out of the wreckage of the glass table. Wearily, he rest his back against the foot of his chair.

"Join the Sith, Carth. It is your only hope."

"Never!" Carth spat in response. "I"ll never join you cowards and murderers!"

"Patience, think. This is your life we're talking about. Do you really want to throw away your life just for a decadent government that can't even protect its own? On a whim of some hypocritical Order who demand your obedience without telling you why you are to risk your life? What right have they to ask this of you? After all, your life doesn't belong to the Republic or the Jedi--it belongs to you."

"I'd rather die than become like you."

Patiently, Saul continued to press. "I am making you the same offer as Malak made me. Join the Sith and your life, and the lives of those you care about, will be spared."

"You killed everything I know when you bombed Telos, Saul. You killed men, women, children, babies--everyone. My family died in that attack, because of you!"

"Your son survived the bombing, Carth. He lives still."

The claim caught Carth's attention. In sudden desperation, he scanned Saul's eyes, trying to find deception somewhere in them. Hopelessly, he realized that if he'd been taken in with Saul's duplicity before, there was no way he could tell whether or not he was telling the truth now.

"You're lying. I don't believe you." His denial sounded hollow even to him. Saul's eyes hardened. "Save your breath, Saul. I'll never join the Sith."

"Then it seems you are nothing more than another prisoner, now," Saul sighed. "Very well, then." He snapped his fingers and suddenly six Sith soldiers entered the lavish room, hauled him upright and snapped cuffs and shackles on him.

"I will kill you, Saul," Carth promised as they started to drag him away.

"You were not the only one with a family, Carth. Nor was Telos the only innocent world in Malak's path." For a moment, Carth thought he could see a twinge of regret in Saul's eyes, but it was quickly replaced by cold heartlessness. "Take him to the torture chambers with the others. Darth Malak will appreciate whatever information we can get from them before he arrives."

* * *

_There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is the Force._

Repeating the decrees of the Jedi Code in her mind was comforting to Juhani even as she recognized the ultimate futility of it. Peace and serenity hadn't helped her in the tomb of Tulak Hord; depriving herself of anger, denying her own terror, had very nearly cost her her life. Upholding peace and serenity over all else, even when danger was at the doorstep, was tantamount to freely offering one's life to any brute who saw fit to take it. It was an obscene and senseless suicide of self.

But still, as it had for years and years, hearing the words repeat in her mind calmed her, nonetheless.

Juhani had never liked small spaces, not since the countless times on Taris she'd spent hiding in old dumpsters, trash cans, packing crates, or anywhere she could go to escape the swoop gangs making their regulars rounds and terrorizing anyone in their path. Now, whenever she could feel her own warm breath on her face, she would break out in nervous shivers. The first time Master Quatra had covered her face for lightsabre training, she'd gone into a startled panic.

There could be no such breakdown this time. She would live or die by her secrecy.

The idealistic words of the Jedi Code helped keep her from another panic attack, wedged as she was inside an air duct underneath the port-side dormitory while the Sith scoured the ship above her. They hadn't found her, just as she promised Kono. That alone, that one small victory against the Sith, gave her a giddy flash of joy.

She waited hours inside the cramped duct, her arms and legs contorted into agonizing positions so she could fit, while the Sith laboriously searched every inch of the ship and made a horrendous noise overturning every box and container of any sort, moving around equipment she couldn't even name to search dusty corners, and with every step pounding on the floor with their boots. When finally the incessant racket ended she'd resisted the nearly overwhelming impulse to crawl her way out of the air duct and stretch her limbs, instead waiting another hour to make certain beyond reasonable doubt that they were indeed gone.

It had been plenty long.

At long last, Juhani squeezed herself around the single bend in the shaft and clawed open the loose vent cover below one of the bunks. She laid herself gratefully out on the floor and indulged in a brief moment to stretch arms and legs that trembled with unbelievable cramps. The sensation of blood returning to starved veins and muscles tense as bowstrings relaxing was unbelievable, certainly one of the better things she'd felt in her whole life. She kept her sigh of sweet relaxation low for fear of making too much noise.

As quietly as she could Juhani stood and reached to her belt to activate the stealth field generator.

It wasn't there. With a start she remembered sticking it and her other things such as her blue lightsabre to the side of the duct at about her shoulder-level so they wouldn't dig into her hip bones.

She took a quick look back in the duct and retrieved her things, clipping the belt confidently over the red sash at her waist. She would have liked to click on her lightsabre just for a moment, to be sure it was still functioning properly, but the need not to make noise overrode her desire for immediate fulfillment. Besides value in helping to calm one's self in certain stressful situations, Juhani recognized wisdom in the Jedi Code for its encouragement of rational thought over blind passions.

With a flick of her finger, Juhani activated the stealth generator and its invisible field washed over her, concealing her lithe frame behind an invisible mirage.

It was time for her to rescue Kono.

* * *

Kono's mind was jolted out of the grasp of sweet oblivion by the sudden submersion of his head in a trough of icy water. Virtually on autopilot, he started struggling mightily against his captors who held his face under the frigid liquid. This was a mistake. Air left his lungs in a single, desperate rush and the freezing water gushed into his throat and nasal passages.

It was a pain quite unlike anything he'd ever felt before. The water had to be just a few degrees above the freezing point, and its sudden introduction into his system made his head and chest feel as if they were simultaneously expanding and contracting. His clinical detachment from his own pain lasted only a few milliseconds before it hit his brain with the force of asteroids colliding. He felt like he was being stabbed by a thousand icy spears.

The torture lasted only a few seconds, but it felt like hours before he was hauled from the tank, choking on the freezing water as he tried to scream with sodden lungs. It was several minutes of pitiful hacking, coughing, and taking desperate gasps of air between moans of agony before Kono had regained control of himself.

He shivered as he silently took stock of his situation.

The ugly wound on the back of his head stung and throbbed madly, still inflicting on him a headache like only a concussion could give, in addition to the one the ultrasonic buzzing of the neural inhibitor clamped around his head was giving him. Roughly supported by his weak knees, he was hanging naked from a rack by manacled wrists, his head not more than six inches from the waiting water--water, he noted, that was tinted red by the blood that was dripping afresh from the lesion on his skull. Sith soldiers stood to either side of him, and judging by their casual body language they clearly did not considering him a threat--a view that Kono agreed with. His concussion made drawing on the Force nearly impossible and he didn't as yet possess the physical strength required to break steel chains with his bare hands.

Just across the oppressively-shadowed room, strung up on chains of her own to another rack, Bastila stood naked in her bonds, holding herself with impossible dignity. Her disheveled and tangled hair fell in twisted strands over a bruised face that bled rich red from a laceration near her left eye. Somehow she managed to retain her Jedi's grace, even despite her deplorable situation.

Kono attempted to gain purchase on the smooth steel floor with a foot, only to have the back of his knee kicked in from behind. The joint was twisted cruelly and he felt bone crack from the trauma. Everything from his knee down felt like it was being incinerated; it took his ragged breath from him as he gritted his teeth and choked on the pain, an agonized hiss the closest he could come to a scream.

While he tried to catch his breath, Kono felt his head again plunged under the water by the unseen Sith torturer. Even though he knew better than to try to jerk free, he involuntarily flinched from the icy liquid, forcing water up his nose. From somewhere above him, he heard a voice telling the torturer to stop and he was pulled back once more. The chains jerked him suddenly upwards so he was nearly upright, but with his injured leg standing was not an option.

Supported by only his bleeding wrists and trying to cough up a razor of ice from his larynx, Kono looked up into the face of someone familiar.

Saul Karath's aged features were, if anything, even more imposing when seen in person than displayed on the galactic holovids. The Butcher of Telos had all the marks of every great military man who ever served in the Republic. The man had for his entire career made a reputation for displaying feats of sheer brilliance and often utter genius in the war room and on the battle bridge alike. The Sith had used his experience and skills well over the war years.

"Well, isn't this quite the unique situation," Karath remarked.

Kono forced a grimace. "And it's nice to meet you too." His face contorted in sudden agony as the torturer twisted his leg, grinding the cracked bones in his knee joint against each other. In his body's futile but automatic attempt to protect his wounded limb, he strained his wrists madly against the iron shackles, scraping the flesh raw.

"Now, now," Karath clucked, "defiance will get you nowhere. You should know that."

Kono glared back as best he could at Karath's smugly satisfied face. Another twist of his afflicted knee wrung tears of pain from Kono's furious eyes.

"This need not happen this way, you know," the Admiral said. "I'm sure if you put aside this petty loyalty to the Jedi and swear fidelity to the Sith, Malak might be persuaded to spare your lives. You can understand how greatly interested he is in you."

At the moment, Kono hurt too much to squeeze words from his throat. But he supposed it mattered little, as he had nothing whatsoever to say to the likes of Saul Karath.

Bastila did, however. "We will never serve Malak or the Dark Side. The Sith will be defeated, Admiral Karath, I promise you."

Karath chuckled, almost amused. "You are hardly in any position to make such claims, Bastila. Besides, the lure of the Dark Side is hard to resist, I'm told. In any case, Lord Malak will be arriving shortly, and I must admit, he is much, much better at this than I.

"But nevertheless, I intend to make clear to you just how little of a choice you have; you either tell me what I want to know, or this will be only the faintest inkling of the suffering and horror that awaits you at the hands of Dark Lord Malak."

An instant after Kono saw Karath nod to the Sith standing behind him he felt a rod, burning white-hot, press suddenly into the flesh of his back between the shoulder blades.

Pain - hot, stinging, throbbing - became the single focus of his whole consciousness. He could feel nothing but the burning instrument on his skin, could see nothing but his mental image of the glowing point scorching a blistering imprint in his living tissue, could smell nothing but the fetid smoke of burnt flesh. Though he couldn't hear over the sound of his own scream or concentrate beyond his own pain, he knew the exact same was being done to Bastila.

The pain did not relent even when the Sith torturer took away the burning brand. The agony lingered sickeningly fresh, radiating from the dead spot of charred flesh like an invasive poison spreading in the body even after the source was cut off. Kono was long out of breath when the torturer dragged his head back, purposely grasping him by the part of his scalp that was the swollen evidence of his fractured skull.

The white-hot tip of the torture device hovered inches from his cheek as he stared up into Saul Karath's face again. "Let's start with something simple, shall we?" the Admiral suggested in an amiable voice. "Where was the academy you were trained? On what planet did the Jedi carry out your indoctrination?"

His lungs burned for air spent on helpless screams of pain, and Kono could not have answered even had he any intention of complying.

"We will never give in to the Sith, Admiral Karath, no matter what you do to us," Bastila gasped in a voice shattered by agony.

"I'll get to you soon enough, Bastila. I was talking to your companion. I ask again, at which Jedi academy were you trained?"

A glare was all the answer Kono was going to give him.

There was another cruelly impersonal nod of Karath's head. Kono shut his eyes and clenched his teeth in preparation for what he knew was to come. It wasn't as he expected.

"Break his fingers."

* * *

Mission had to give the Sith soldiers credit for being thorough. After subduing her and the rest of the crew, disarmed them of obvious weaponry and all armor of any kind, they'd then done a systematic strip-search of every member of the crew. Had they been in a different situation, Mission would have giggled and gawked like a besotted, fanatical worshiper when she'd seen Carth with his clothes off. The Sith confiscated everything they thought could even possibly be considered able to conceal something of conceivable aid in escaping a confinement cell.

But she had to take away points for their foolish belief that shackles, manacles, yards of chain, and a dozen guards would be enough to keep an enraged Wookiee under control. Big Z had not been happy at all being forced to watch as they took every stitch of clothing away from her, including her headdress. The Sith were so surprised by his sudden attack that they'd needed to call reinforcements to get him subdued.

They were thorough, but not thorough enough. After he'd taken off her clothes, the Sith searching her hadn't done anything more than squeeze her chest perfunctorily and fondle a _lek _in boredom. No, Mission remembered, he'd been quick to sidle over to the unconscious but equally naked Bastila. For some reason that irritated her; like they thought she wasn't as attractive as the Princess Jedi.

Mentally slapping herself, Mission decided it was a good thing not to be the main object of Sith lust. Although, if they had such a thing for naked ladies, she would have expected them to do a better job searching her... She shrugged. They weren't interested in her.

The price of their disinterest had been that fact that they'd blatantly missed the subcutaneous implant in her shoulder.

Back on Taris, she'd learned how to use them from the Hidden Beks. Spies all over the galaxy regularly used field-swappable subcutaneous implants to hide listening devices, tiny holochips, and minuscule tools, among other things. They were just a simple matter of slicing into an area of skin free of major veins or arteries so as to avoid severe tissue damage, pushing the razorblade-mounted implant deep into the wound, and closing it over with kolto pseudoflesh. With a couple deep, bloody scratches from her long fingernails, Mission ripped open the fresh wound she knew was there.

She winced a little, the mild regional anesthetic she'd applied to her shoulder having worn off. Thankfully it didn't bleed very much when she dug the small device out of her arm, but it did hurt plenty. The tiny, bloody chip she held her hands contained the most robust anti-security protocols she'd ever hacked, as well as a supremely useful razorblade to boot.

The chip was only one half of the combination that was going to get her out of the cell, however. And if the Sith had been dumb to miss her implant, they were really dumb to miss her other contraband. Mission supposed it all came down to them finding Bastila more attractive. She chuckled and thought to herself that Bastila would probably faint at the thought of doing what Mission had done to keep her stuff secret and hidden.

It was something Zaerdra had taught her, in a "woman to woman discussion" during one of those rare times when Gadon Thek wasn't around and needing protecting. She'd warned that because of the risk of internal injury and the fact that it hurt like the blazes, Mission should only use this particular technique in the most dire of circumstances. While waiting for the _Hawk_ to be dragged into the Sith docking bay, Mission had decided that this probably qualified as one of those times.

As it turned out Zaerdra was right; it did hurt like the blazes. Mission grimaced and bit back a yelp of pain as she produced the slightly bloody, compact little hydrospanner from its 'hiding place.' She grinned stupidly--yes, sweet ol' Bassie would definitely faint if she ever found out.

Retrieving her cell-breaking kit turned out to be hardest part of busting out. It was easy to separate the wall panel close to the shield door with her razorblade and from there to slice through the rubber cladding protecting the electrical conduits. A few cuts and splices, and she had her impromptu security tunneler jacked into her cell's system. The datachip did its work in under fifteen seconds and the shield door deactivated.

She'd already observed the pacing guards for an hour or two. They were frightfully lax, only patrolling the cells every twenty minutes or so, giving her plenty of time to mosey about.

There was an empty cell across from hers. She deactivated the shield door, ducked out of the hallway, and waited for the next Sith guard to show up. When she saw him passing by, not so much as glancing to either side, she dove for him, the force of her impact sending him tumbling to the floor of her old cell. His blaster rifle clattered to the ground out of his reach as she landed on top of him.

The Sith's shiny silver armor looked pretty, but Mission knew it did a less than adequate job in protecting important things. She rammed her knee into his groin while he was still momentarily stunned. He wasn't even able to manage a scream, just a pitiful wheezing gasp. A solid kick to his head silenced him for sure.

She had to work quickly to get his armor off him and on herself. It was by no means a perfect, or even a comfortable, fit, but it was going to have to do. She couldn't go larking around the brig in the buff. The helmet was a lost cause, so she didn't bother trying to get in on, but the rest wasn't so bad. She was going to need better, but it was all she had at the moment. Although even underneath the black suit and silver armor, she still felt naked without her headdress.

Later, Mission chided herself. She had stuff to do first.

After she'd locked the unconscious Sith in the spare cell, Mission took off. Most of the occupants of the brig were too weary, too pained, too stoned, or too apathetic to give her more than a glance. Mostly they just saw the armor, not even noticing the fact that she was a good deal shorter and smaller than a regular Sith soldier, or that she wasn't wearing a helmet.

A few times she had to hide around corners or behind containers while real Sith passed by. But it wasn't as if she'd never had to hide from anyone before. It greatly helped that they weren't actively searching for her, but even had they been, she'd been in those situations too, so it wasn't like she didn't know what she was doing.

After a great deal of lurking, she found what she needed; a computer terminal guarded by a lone Sith. Stealthily she crept up behind him, at the same time trying to think of how she could take him out without him making any noise. Discovery now would be fatal. She figured she really had only one option, but the thought of it made her heart pound and stomach flutter because she didn't know if she could do it quickly enough.

But she had to do this. There was no way around it.

With a silent wish for luck, she sprang at the unsuspecting Sith. Moving more quickly than she thought possible of herself, she wrapped her arms around his head and twisted his neck as hard and as suddenly as she could. With little more than a grunt, he collapsed, dead as a doornail.

Snapping his neck had been easier than she'd thought. Mission couldn't believe she'd just been able to do what she did. Killing with her bare hands was somehow different from just shooting someone or slicing into them with a sword. She thought maybe she should feel terrible about having done it, but she didn't.

The Sith had massacred Taris, her home, and done the same to a lot of other planets. She knew what they did when they conquered a world; the looting, the pillaging and destruction, the widespread rape, torture, and murder as they passed through cities establishing their domination. They weren't getting any pity from her.

The computer was a simple thing to hack. In fact, she didn't even need to get dirty with any of its sweet innards, as the Sith had thoughtfully provided his authorization pass-card on his fresh corpse. A few key strokes and she'd located most of their confiscated equipment and the cells where the others were being held.

Armed with her dead Sith friend's datapad, Mission downloaded the data and started off, snagging his blaster rifle just in case. Her first stop would be to get her things--she was getting sick of the clunky, poorly-fitting armor and really, really wanted her headdress back. Besides, Jolee was a far cry from Carth, and the old man's skinny frame was something she only needed to see naked as sparingly as possible.

* * *

Waking up inside a body bag was something Canderous couldn't recall ever experiencing. It was pretty much as he'd expected it; dark, stuffy, hot, and hard to move in. Fortunately, gnawing his way through the material wasn't so bad, but maneuvering his arms into a position from which he could rip open a hole was a bit of a pain.

He found himself lying on a shelf shared with two other dead bodies. There was no one in the mortuary besides his present company, and they were in no condition to report him to their superiors. He spied his things sitting on a counter across the room and past an examination table.

As Canderous was clambering off the shelf, a uniformed Sith soldier suddenly walked into the austere chamber. He instantly shifted objectives and lunged for the man, driving his hammer-like fist at the Sith's faceplate. When he made contact, Canderous could hear the solid rap of the man's head ricocheting inside his own helmet. It'd probably caused him at least a broken nose.

Still moving forward, Canderous locked an arm under the Sith's chin and grabbed him in a choke-hold a hundred pounds of muscle in the making. He had no chance against Canderous' relentless grip, the wild flailing of his arms and legs did nothing but exhaust the tiny amount of air still in his lungs.

Kicking, clawing, and desperately groping at his throat, the Sith died croaking and twitching in the merciless stranglehold.

Dropping the corpse to the floor, Canderous stretched his limbs and craned his neck until he felt a fulfilling chorus of pops along the vertebrae. Without sparing the dead soldier a glance, he sauntered over to retrieve his things. In short order, his weapon belt was fastened around his waist and blaster rifle slung back over his shoulders. He was ready to go.

Before he left the morgue, Canderous took care of one last thing; he tossed the dead Sith onto the corpse rack.

He had an arsenal to raid.


	3. Chapter 3

The pain could not have been worse if the Sith torturer had sliced off his index finger with a dull branch cutter. Bent back nearly a hundred and eighty degrees, the bones of Kono's finger had been ripped from the joint, splintered inside the flesh. His body, automatically trying to arch from the pain, only succeeded in digging the shackles further into raw, bloody wounds on his wrists and ankles. An incoherent moan escaped Kono's rigidly clenched teeth as he shut his eyes against the pain.

The voice of Saul Karath droned as Kono wheezed trying to catch his breath. "This first question was a test. Where else would they take you but Dantooine, the supposed safe haven that Malak wouldn't dare touch? A very poor assumption on their part. Darth Malak has just recently finished his destruction of Dantooine. The Academy is gone, nothing left of it but ruined buildings and broken corpses. Your former Masters are all dead, incinerated by the power of the Dark Side."

"No!" Bastila gasped.

"Oh yes," Karath pressed, his tone heavy; almost regretful. "Malak is returning, fresh from the massacre of those who oppose him. Were I to venture a guess, I would say he will not be in a forgiving mood. And you are now running out of time to save yourselves."

Kono sighed. It was inevitable.

The Sith torturer seized another finger.

"Now we will begin in earnest. You may start by telling me what you of all people are doing in Bastila's company? On what foul mission have the Jedi sent you?"

Kono just glared up into Saul's face and remained silent. He knew the man had no intention either of halting their torture or sparing their lives. He knew the fascination torture and murder brought to men like him. It was an addictive practice to watch another's suffering for your own personal benefit. This torture would last for hours no matter how much he might divulge.

His face contorted in pain and more incoherent noises squirmed from his throat as another finger was snapped at the base.

Saul angrily grabbed a fistful of Kono's hair and jerked him to eye-level. "Again! What scheme have the Jedi Council wrapped you in?"

Somewhere, from the depths of his pain and suffering, Kono salvaged a measure of satisfaction at the vexation he was causing Saul Karath. He gave the admiral a pained smirk and spat a glob of bloody mucus in his well-manicured face.

Karath drew back in disgust and made a cutting motion to the Sith who stood behind Kono. The brutal hands let go of Kono's twisted fingers, letting him take a breath of relief. He was going to need his fingers.

"I can see torturing you will be fruitless," Karath acknowledged. "But how truly noble are you, after all? All heroes fall. Often all it takes is to threaten the life of another."

Kono just glared.

"Very well, then. The price of your defiance will fall on Bastila. We will see how long you can listen to her agonized screams under the torture you bring upon her."

"Tell him nothing, Kono!" Bastila yelled desperately.

One of the Sith soldiers standing guard backhanded her viciously across the jaw with his armored fist. Spitting blood and broken teeth fragments, she cried out in pain as the Sith seized her breast and squeezed until blood ran between his fingers.

When he released her and she could again draw a breath, Bastila spoke in a whisper. "My pain is meaningless, Kono. Don't give in for my sake."

It was her choice, Kono knew. The mission was worth her life. Malak had to be stopped, no matter the cost--even if the cost was her life, Kono knew she would gladly give it. Neither was there anything to be gained by giving in to the Sith. Malak might want Bastila's Force abilities for his own purposes, but he would have absolutely no use for Kono. He was too much of a threat to Malak's power. There was no mercy to be had down either avenue.

Kono put all his faith in Juhani and refused to answer Admiral Karath a word. It was the only way.

"Very well, then. This is the price of your insolence," Karath declared.

A robed Sith apprentice came to his side. His face was covered in barbaric tattoos and ritualistic scars. His eyes had no pupils or irises, just white orbs criss-crossed with bulging, grotesque veins. After casting a hungry smirk vat Kono, he took a curved knife from his belt and touched the point to Bastila's sweat-streaked flesh.

Kono lost his breath when he saw the new Sith cut a long bloody arc down Bastila's chest. He remembered the cut, knew the tribe from where the technique had come, and recognized that this was a true master of the art of torture; a Kel-Soth. A moan of pain from clenched teeth betrayed Bastila's pain, but Kono knew from bitter experience that the worst was yet to come.

Taking with him the rest of the torturers whom he apparently considered unneeded, Admiral Karath left the Sith to his work, which he went about with professional skill. The curved knife was already soaked in Bastila's blood by the time he made a second cut, mirroring the first one, down the middle of her chest between her breasts and halting just above the navel of her stomach. Bastila's face quivered with unshed tears of pain that welled up in her eyes as she tried not to lose control of herself.

His stomach roiled and bile rose to the top of his throat as Kono watched the Sith slice his knife under the skin at the top of the two oozing wounds, loosening a gory loop of flesh that he then gripped in his fingers. An involuntary whimper escaped Bastila's mouth as he did this--a tiny sample of what was to come.

The loose flap of Bastila's skin in his grasp, the Sith wrenched his hand back with cruel strength, ripping off a strip of flesh that ran from the top of her waist to the bottom of her jaw.

Bastila's first scream was every bit as bad as the one he remembered. Full-throated, ear-splitting, gut-wrenching, it shook Kono to his very soul. Her entire front side was instantly covered in blood, it poured down her legs in unbelievable quantities to make a ghastly pool at her feet.

Just as had Caroleen's before her, Bastila's hopeless scream brought tears to Kono's eyes. He remembered all too well being unable to save Caroleen, without reinforcements from the rest of his men he never stood a chance to rescue her. Instead, he'd had to watch, unable to help, as for hours the Kel-Soth practitioners skinned her alive, taking their time, drinking in every scream like an intoxicating beverage.

But he could save Bastila; he had to believe he could. She didn't deserve this...

_Please hurry, Juhani_, Kono silently pleaded.

Meanwhile, Bastila kept screaming, begging for it to stop. But it didn't--it got worse.

* * *

Cloaked in the stealth generator's invisible energy field, Juhani frowned at the situation presented her.

The guard level in the halls leading from the hangar had grown increasingly heavy the closer she crept to the interrogation chambers. First there would be a security detail roaming the hall, then two, then three at staggered intervals. Eventually, she reached a point where Sith were standing guard at regularly fixed points on either side of the hallway. To avoid detection, she'd had to slow her progress and all but crawl past on her hands and knees.

But she was finally there, the problem was going to be getting in. The hallway terminated in three doors leading different directions, each guarded by a pair of Sith soldiers, and several more stood by a security access terminal, the computer she needed to get to.

Surprise was going to be key.

Reaching into the Force, Juhani drew closed the doors behind her, sealing off the only escape route for both her and the Sith. There could be no survivors.

Startled, several Sith guards fired blind shots at the door, forcing her to duck for cover as she simultaneously leapt forward, angling for the Sith guarding the computer system. A stray blaster shot punched through the stealth field around her, and despite deflecting it with a fist of kinetic Force energy, the generator's energy field was disrupted and she was suddenly visible.

Then things began to happen with blinding speed. The Sith, seeing her, all opened fire at once. As she completed her leap, she flipped in midair, freeing her lightsabre and igniting its blue blade in time to cleave the nearest Sith in two. As the two smoking halves of what had once been a man fell to the ground, Juhani planted her feet on the floor, sliced apart another Sith's rifle and hooked an arm around his neck, using him as a shield to ward against the storm of blaster fire rapidly homing in on her. With one arm she held up the man's body as it was riddled with his comrades' shots, and with the other she swung her lightsabre to deftly guard her exposed flank, deflecting still more weapons fire back at her adversaries.

She felt life leave the Sith she held hostage, and dropped his smoking body as soon as he became nothing but dead weight. Several enemies down already, she went after the remaining Sith with a fury. Everything boiled down to one salient objective: cut. It meant one thing and everything. And so she cut them; without pity and without mercy. There was no quarter asked or given in a battle to the death. She cut until every last Sith in the chamber was dead and she stood alone over the bodies of her enemies.

Panting with exertion, Juhani wiped back a few strands of hair from her face as she deactivated her lightsabre and stepped up to the security computer. She frowned at the display, unfamiliar with the system. She'd never been especially proficient with computers, having had only limited exposure to them between living in Lower City Taris and the relatively non-modern confines of the Jedi Academy. Juhani knew she didn't have time to familiarize herself with the Sith systems; she had no idea what was being done to Kono and Bastila and likely had less, rather than more, time than she thought.

Frustrated, she slapped her hand to the keypad and let an electrical blast rip through the circuitry, her single overpowering thought the need to open the three locked doors.

The terminal was destroyed in a split second by the massive arc that leaped from her hand, and the doors opened obediently.

Her way clear, Juhani turned away from the decimated computer and focused her attention on the new influx of Sith from the three rooms revealed. Hurling a Force blast from her fingers at the largest group of soldiers, she hurried through the door from where she heard the sound of high-pitched screams, raising her lightsabre again to ward off the attacks that greeted her.

Juhani barely registered her surroundings as she fought off the lightsabres of neophyte Sith apprentices. There were three in the room, attempting to surround her with their red blades. Not falling for their trap, Juhani moved to dispatch them quickly, slicing through the gut of one as she advanced for the next. She knew she had to keep moving or she was in serious danger of being overrun.

The second Sith fell missing half of his face. Juhani could almost smell her enemies pressing in behind her, cutting off her way of escape. She reached a hand to the ceiling and yanked a heavy chain-laden device from its brackets with the Force, hurled it at the Sith soldiers behind her trying to flank her as she fought. Bodies were crushed under its weight, freeing her to finish off the last apprentice. As he swung at her, she leaned into the blow and angled his red sabre off to the side, at the last second applying an unexpected burst of strength that knocked the weapon out of his hand.

It was over for the Sith in less than a second as she drove her blue blade into his chest point-blank without hesitation.

Juhani could still hear screams coming from farther in, behind more doors. She also heard something else, but in the heat of battle hadn't been able to distinguish what it was; a familiar voice.

It was Carth. He was sitting inside a small metal cage that was far too small to comfortably accommodate his bulky frame. His arms and legs were scrunched up as small as they could get and his back arched painfully over his knees, iron bars digging into the back of his ribs. What looked the most painful was the way his neck was craned so could look at her with a relieved expression.

"Thank the Force, Juhani. Do you mind getting me out of here?" he asked.

"Do not move," Juhani warned, and seized the lid of his cage with firm net of Force energy and ripped it from its hinges. She extended a hand to help him to his feet, which he took gratefully. His hands were cuffed together, so she sliced the cuffs apart with the whistling tip of her lightsabre, startling Carth.

"Thanks," he mumbled.

Juhani was already thinking ahead. The screams kept on without letup in the background.

"Take this," she told Carth, tossing him a Sith blaster rifle, "we must move quickly."

Carth stayed well behind her, keeping his eye on their six while Juhani plowed ahead. The rest of the room was empty of anything living and she quickly came to a door that led farther into the torture chambers.

Juhani opened the doors and was immediately hit full force with the sound of the piercing screams she'd been hearing. The first thing she saw was Kono held up by bleeding wrists. He noticed her instantly.

"Kel-Soth!" he yelled in warning. In that moment, Juhani saw something she'd previously thought completely alien to his hard brown eyes; panic. That alone scared her.

Then her gaze shifted and fell upon the black-robed man standing at the opposite end of the room from where Kono hung. In his dark robes, he was almost silhouetted in the harsh overhead light against a blood-drenched body; Bastila. She was screaming horribly, her face bruised, her hair dirty and disarranged.

Juhani was for a moment frozen by what she saw being done to the young Jedi. Her entire front side was soaked in blood that poured from a host of long, narrow strips on her chest where the skin had been violently stripped away, exposing bare muscle tissue beneath. Flaccid strips of skin lay in a gruesome heap in the spreading blood pool at her feet.

As Juhani stood in stunned shock, the Sith practitioner turned his attention away from his task and toward her. Milky white eyes crossed by grotesque veins met her golden irises. He gave her a wicked smile and casually tore off another long piece of Bastila's skin, wringing fresh screams from her. Juhani tried desperately to make herself react, but her body was paralyzed with horror. Her lightsabre fell to her side.

With blinding speed, the Sith lunged at her, wrapping the bloody strap of flesh around her neck in a stranglehold. Not even thinking, just acting out of pure animal instinct, Juhani suddenly swung her lightsabre arm and sliced off the Sith's leg, sending them crashing to the ground. She felt his hot breath on her face as she tried unsuccessfully to draw a breath of her own, his repugnant visage was inches away.

Her vision was blurry, the sights and sounds of the world around her growing more distant and foggy the longer she went without a breath of air. She felt like she being crushed beneath the weight of a mountain while her lungs burned desperately for air.

All of a sudden, from that distant place that was reality, she felt something warm splash her face. The choke hold around her neck relaxed. Juhani gulped the dank air of the torture chamber gratefully as she felt the now-limp body of the Sith dragged off her. She looked up to see Carth standing over her. She nodded her thanks as he helped her up and looked back at Kono.

He scowled when she tried to approach him. "I'm fine!" Kono snapped. With a nod of his head, he gestured at Bastila, who was moaning in delirium, rapidly losing consciousness. "Help her!"

* * *

Kono sighed with relief when Juhani sliced the chains from Bastila's wrists, a slightly uncomfortable Carth helping her lower the fitfully-whimpering Jedi to the bloody floor so Juhani could start healing her. Without the sustaining link the Kel-Soth torturer provided while alive, Bastila's massive blood loss would kill her within minutes if she didn't get help. As she summoned her healing power, Juhani whispered an incantation under her breath that she thought Kono couldn't hear; the Jedi Code. Kono grimaced. Whatever helped, he supposed.

The Cathar's hand began to glow and Bastila's ragged breathing stabilized substantially.

"I'll get some kolto," Carth offered, but Juhani was already lost in the healing trance.

"Not so fast, Onasi," Kono growled. "She can handle it. Now care to get me off of this?"

"Sorry," Carth quickly apologized and unlocked Kono's restraints.

Before even comforting his lacerated wrists and broken fingers, or attempting to put weight on his broken knee, Kono leaned himself against a beam and ripped the hated neural inhibitor from off his head. After the ultra-sonic buzzing of the device, a concussion-inflicted migraine had never felt so good.

"Do me a favor, Carth," Kono said as he reached down to touch his injured knee tentatively. "Our weapons are in here somewhere. Find them." Carth nodded. "Maybe some clothes while you're at it," Kono added.

At the last request, Carth was unable to restrain himself from taking a fleeting sideways glance at Bastila, whose oozing wounds were closing over, as if to assure himself that Kono's suggestion applied to her too. Kono's neutral expression darkened to a glower, and Carth quickly got about his business.

"And get rid of that jacket," Kono added as Carth went off on his search.

In a few minutes the Republic pilot came up with both Bastila and Kono's lightsabres, belts, and a pair of Sith robes. By then, Bastila had returned to some semblance of consciousness and lucidity and ordered the two men behind a standing locker while she dressed. Even though they were on a clock, Kono had casually allowed the indulgence, needing time to patch up wounds of his own. With a combination of kolto and Force healing, he was able to knit back together the bones in his knee and hand in a few minutes. Still they would need time to heal on their own, so he would have to go easy on them as best he could. A few extra medpacks took care of the lacerations on his wrists and the charred welt on his back.

By the time he and Bastila were finished, Kono again was every inch the dark warrior, dressed in the black robes and armed with his exotic lightsabre. Bastila was distinctly uncomfortable wearing hers, and her face was paler than usual, but Kono knew that would pass. He doubted the memory would ever pass, though. Caroleen being tortured to death in the same manner still hadn't faded from his mind. He imagined even more so for the victim.

Bastila shuddered."That was... unpleasant." Pushing some disarranged hair from her face, she gave Kono a terse smile. "Despite what happened, however, I'm relieved you didn't give in to them even to save me. Our mission is far too important to jeopardize for just one of our lives."

Kono nodded silently, knowing the truth in that.

"Although," Bastila went on, casting her eyes to the floor, "I will admit, at times there was a part of me that almost hoped you would tell him, or that I would simply die, just so the pain would stop."

"If I thought it could have helped, I might have talked. But to a Kel-Soth it would have made no difference how much I told them."

Carth stiffened.

"Why do you say that?" Juhani asked.

"Because I've dealt with them before, I know what they're like," Kono answered. "They're a tribe of nomadic Force users who believe in the giving and taking of extreme amounts of pain as the only way to achieve true enlightenment and oneness with the Force. They settle desert areas, so it was only a matter of time until the Sith discovered them a few years back on Korriban."

Bastila gaped at him. "How could you know this?"

"It's all in the files. Classified Republic military information. I was in the special forces ten years before all this started, remember?"

"Of course. I'm sorry, I must have forgotten." Despite her tactful withdrawal, Kono could tell Bastila was deeply disturbed by what he'd said. Despite having read his file on record, she didn't even know the beginning of the things he'd seen.

"So are we just gonna stand around here talking while we wait for the Sith to regroup or we gonna get out of here?" Carth, arms crossed over a shiny armored vest he'd scavenged, was getting impatient. This was hardly a new development, since he was most always impatient.

Kono dramatically cast a hand toward the door. "After you."

"That's not very funny," Carth grumbled.

"After me, then," Kono said, bringing his lightsabre to hand. The others quickly fell in behind him.

The numbers of the Sith bodies he found outside caused him to raise his eyebrows in approval; he doubted any had been able to set off any alarms. The longer they could go without alarms, the better.

Slightly more problematic was the lone door that led from the interrogation chambers; it was sealed shut. Ordinarily, when faced with such an obstacle, Kono would have simply blasted the door away, but with his head injury he was wary of pushing himself too far. Using the Force in such ways was taxing on the mind, and his was not at full strength. Concussions tended to be distracting.

He glanced questioningly at Juhani, who immediately picked up on his intent and reached out with the Force to crack open the blast doors. Kono nodded gratefully.

One less obstacle in their path to the bridge, freedom, and vengeance.

* * *

"Objection: Master said only to 'take back the ship.' He did not place restrictions on how we were to go about doing so! Threat: If you are attempting to thwart Master's plans, I may be forced to take aggressive measures in order to persuade you to a different course of action."

Zaalbar gave a quiet growl of irritation. Jolee just rolled his eyes at the assassin droid's latest salvo in a constant bombardment of complaints.

Getting from the brig to the hangar had relatively easy, and the old Jedi had managed to sneak them past most of the Sith sentries they'd come across--much to the dismay of HK-47. The rust-colored droid had immediately wanted to blast everyone in sight as soon as Mission reactivated him, and was stayed only by continuous reminders that he had to follow Kono's plan just like the rest of them. And for the moment, that meant taking orders from Jolee, to which HK strenuously objected but sullenly went along with.

If droids could cry in frustration, HK-47 would have when he, Jolee, Zaalbar, and T3-M4 finally got to the hangar - filled with Sith troopers - and Jolee said to wait before attacking.

Jolee had dealt with droids before, there'd been plenty of them around during the old Sith war, but HK-47 was an entirely different experience. He'd never before encountered a droid with such a unique disposition. Jolee had trouble imagining how a droid with such fiercely independent and anti-social programming could still be shackled to one single 'Master.' From what he knew of such things, droids went rogue eventually, hence the need for memory wipes over the course of a lifetime. HK-47 looked ancient, but appeared still to have the same set of core programming. To say he was unstable would be a ludicrous understatement.

The first thing the droid had wanted to do upon reaching the hangar was shoot something, as that was what he wanted to do_ before _reaching it as well_, _but Jolee knew if he opened a firefight, they would likely not live through it. Sith soldiers were clustered about the hangar like bees in a hive, and he knew there were likely hordes of others just moments away should anything seem to be going wrong. So for the moment, he had to keep HK-47's finger off many, many triggers.

Thankfully, invoking Kono's name seemed at least to remind the loose-cannon of who was in charge.

"For the last time, you annoying thing, keep your voice down!" Jolee yelled quietly at HK. "And it's just like I told you a thousand times before; until a good number of them get drawn away from the ship, we'll just have to wait."

"Challenge: When you say 'a thousand times,' I believe it has only been on the order of fifteen times that you have made this particular argument."

"Figure of speech," Jolee growled. "I'm still not changing my mind."

"Objection: But..."

"No. That's final."

"Resignation: This waiting is not good for my algorithms."

"Oh, you'll be fine."

"_How do you think we might distract a sufficient number of the guards?_" Zaalbar asked, doing his best to keep his own voice low so as not to give away their position. Where they were - hiding behind stacks of fuel barrels - was not the best place to be in the event of a firefight, but it did offer concealment for the moment.

"I've been thinking about that," Jolee answered, idly tugging his gray beard.

He glanced at the T3 droid, remembering all the computer terminals they'd passed, and wishing he could understand modern droidspeak. The language which had been simple task/response during his days had gotten so much more complex and confusing in recent times. Droids like T3-M4 didn't use a dialect that remotely resembled the one he'd learned during the old Sith war. Save for a few of the very most basic commands and responses, Jolee could not communicate with modern droids.

It was a shame, since a plan was forming in his head. If the appropriate alarms could be raised, diverting attention away from the hangar for long enough... But he had no way to know if the T3 droid would be able to do it.

Maybe he could get the HK droid to help. Jolee checked himself; HK-47 would help as long there was blasting involved at some point.

Chances were there would still be a few guards left; guards needing blasting.

Yes, he could get HK-47 to help.

"Okay, I think I have a plan..."

* * *

"So Canderous, what's the biggest thing you've ever blown up?"

"A Republic fuel barge. Now quiet down, kid, and be careful with those detonators!"

Mission shrugged and put the fascinating little device back in her pack. She would have bristled at being called 'kid,' if Canderous wasn't in the habit of calling everyone 'kid.' He even called Kono 'kid,' so coming from him the name didn't really mean anything.

Since he had all the muscles, he was carrying all the plasma explosives, and since Mission knew about electronics, she was carrying all the blasting devices, wiring, triggers, and detonators. They'd taken to the maintenance corridors - narrow, cramped, wretched little tunnels full of exposed pipes, electrical conduits, and nothing but a steel grate floor - in order to avoid most of the Sith security patrols. The downside to it was lugging the heavy packs in the close confines was awkward at best. It was loud in the shafts, though, so they didn't really have to worry about being quiet, but Canderous preferred silence over Mission's usual chattiness.

Canderous had proven rather nontalkative, giving monosyllabic answers or annoyed grunts to her every attempt at conversation. Mission supposed it was probably just since she'd been the one who'd been able to get them into the maintenance corridors in the first place, and he was either annoyed she had to be tagging along, or annoyed she'd done something he couldn't, with all his blasters and muscles, do himself.

They were somewhere close to the ship's reactor. Mission could tell because the bass humming all around had gotten louder and the temperature had gotten warmer since they'd been following the shaft. She'd concluded from checking her stolen ship's directory that this particular maintenance shaft would take them close to the reactor's coolant intake system.

That would be perfect for what Kono had in mind. Destroying the coolant system would mean a delayed reaction, which was everything they were counting on for their escape. They needed enough time to get clear of the ship before it exploded. Kono had said no less than two hours, then the charges detonated. Mission estimated it would probably take a reactor of this size thirty minutes to go critical and overload, and after that, it was anybody's guess as to when it would finally blow. It would give them enough time to get back to the _Hawk,_ regroup with everyone, and be on their way. The pursuing Sith would be necessarily distracted by the fiery demise of the mothership.

All of a sudden, Canderous froze. Mission heard the noise a second later and dropped to a crouch next to a cold pipe in the side of the wall. Her blaster was up in a flash. Impossibly holding his giant blaster rifle in one massive hand, the grizzled Mandalorian signaled for utter silence as he focused his rapt gaze on a bend in the shaft just ahead.

The noise, something dragging against the steel grating of the floor, rang out again. Two Sith technicians carrying a heavy piece of machinery rounded the bend. Canderous didn't wait for their expressions of surprise, just pulled the trigger on his automatic rifle, spraying the two with a hail of red fire.

Riddled with holes, the two Sith quickly fell dead. Stray shots hit the walls of the maintenance corridor, blowing open pressurized pipes and severing live conduits. Compressed air, steam, and other gases started venting into the shaft, along with showers of sparks from the walls.

Canderous shouted a vile curse in what Mission guessed had to be Mando'a.

"We'd better move fast now, Muscles," Mission commented. "That's the sort of thing that gets noticed."

The Mandalorian grumbled something and said to get moving.

When they rounded the bend ahead, Mission let out a low whistle that was lost to the engine noise at what she saw. The corridor opened into a chamber that was paradoxically large but still cramped, at the middle of which was a giant funnel-shaped cylinder that reached up into the ceiling and down into the floor. It was surrounded and covered in valves, gauges, tubes, and every other sort of thing such a machine as a coolant system for an intergalactic star drive might need.

"I guess this is it."

Canderous slung the heavy pack full of explosives off his back. "Let's get these charges planted and get out of here. I've got a bad feeling about this."


	4. Chapter 4

Quite rudely, the young Sith lieutenant was startled from his ogling of a buxom holo chick by an alarm. Irritated at the interruption, he pushed the small holoprojector aside and studied the security panel before him, trying to find the offending - and surely malfunctioning - system so he could shut it off. After all, on his entire tour of duty on the _Leviathan_, there had not been one breach of security in his wing; Sith security was too good. It had to be a malfunction.

Instead of finding an easily-explained random alarm, the Sith gaped in shock at his console; every cell in the entire brig had been opened.

As the lieutenant fumbled for the intercom to inform security teams, knocking over his "Twi'lek of the Month" holovid in the process, he was stopped short by another alarm, this time a fire alarm--the detection systems on an entire sub-level had been triggered. Why the fire-suppressant systems hadn't dealt with the problem, the lieutenant couldn't guess, but the sensors were reading a deck-wide inferno. He turned in his seat to reach for the hard line to damage control, but was interrupted yet again by another alert.

Life support was shutting down for several command decks.

Panic gripped the young Sith; he hadn't been trained for any kind of situation like this. This was the sort of thing that was only supposed to happen to people who knew what they were doing. What was he supposed to do?

More alarms lit up his security console, alerting him to everything from an attempted slice into the main computer to a malfunction in the plumbing and sewage system.

The Sith lieutenant was close to tears as he finally wrenched his helpless gaze from the console and, all but sobbing, yelled into the nearest comm the one word he knew would bring reinforcements in droves.

"_Sabotage!_"

* * *

Canderous cracked open the access hatch, peered into the hallway beyond, and quickly shut it again at the sight that greeted him. He cursed under his breath, hoping the scores of Sith soldiers rushing through the corridor hadn't noticed the maintenance door opening, and tugged Mission Vao out of the way, into another side-passage.

She seemed genuinely surprised that they'd run into security forces; a fact which Canderous did not at all find surprising. And yet the girl had insisted they could come this way. Canderous sighed in frustration. Getting mad at her was not going to solve any problems.

"This way's no good. We'd be cut to pieces before taking two steps out the door. You got any other ideas?"

The Twi'lek girl shrugged. "Try another one?"

He heaved a huge sigh.

"Hey, it's not my fault they decided to rotate shifts, or something!" she protested.

"Can you find another way to the hangar from here?" Canderous asked in a growl.

Crossing her arms in a pout, Mission looked down at the datapad she held in one hand. "Hmm, let me see..."

Canderous could vividly imagine being shot in the back of the head by a random Sith soldier while he waited for this teenager to check her map. They really needed to move; anywhere was good, as long as it was not where they were standing.

He was just about to start manhandling her down the maintenance shaft, wherever it might lead and consequences be cursed, when she let out a triumphant "Aha!" and he paused. Victoriously, she planted a finger to the screen of the datapad. "This way!" Mission exclaimed, and immediately started off, reminding Canderous of how annoyingly quick on her feet she was.

"Where?" he asked, trying to keep up with her.

"A back entrance to the hangar. It's a conduit for fuel lines, but we can probably squeeze through," she replied with irrepressible cheer.

"Fuel conduit," he repeated flatly.

Mission bobbed her head enthusiastically. "Don't worry, Muscles, you'll fit. They have to make these things serviceable, so there ought to be room enough for us to wiggle by."

Wiggle by was certainly one way to describe the next forty-five minutes. Mission, with a frame about one-third or one-fourth his size, was able to clamber almost effortlessly through the tiny crawlspace that ran just beneath a giant fuel pipe. Canderous, on the other hand, had to take off his pack and all his weapons and push them ahead of himself as he scooted forward on his stomach over the rough, narrow floor, slowly inching his way along. At times he would lose sight of the scampering little Twi'lek girl and curse to himself as he plodded on, his way lit only by emergency lights that were few and far in between. Mission would come back into sight a few moments later, an expression of befuddled impatience at his slowness on her face until she remembered how much bigger he was. She would shrug and start off again and, to Canderous' great annoyance, disappear again.

In his mind, Canderous could hear the timed charges on the reactor's cooling system ticking. They had a limited amount of time to get off the ship.

Finally he caught up with Mission, who was waiting for him at the foot of an access ladder that led, he presumed, up into another corridor. Breathing heavily from the excruciating task of squeezing through the fuel conduit, Canderous slung his things back over his shoulders and looked up.

"This goes to the hangar?"

Mission nodded. "I can go first if you--"

"No," Canderous barked, putting a meaty fist on the first rung of the ladder. "I'll take point. You stay behind me and try not to get yourself shot."

"Fine. Whatever," Mission mumbled. He thought heard her say "Make me," as he started up the ladder, but ignored her.

Canderous gritted his teeth as he gripped the rungs in his hands. He'd had enough of sneaking around. He just hoped there were Sith soldiers aplenty in the hangar; he wanted to shoot _something_.

Reaching the top, he threw open the hatch and had started to heave his shoulders onto the deck when he felt the barrel of a very large blaster rifle touch the back of his neck.

"Warning: Do not move, meatbag, or you will soon be without a processing unit."

Canderous rolled his eyes and groaned audibly.

"Instruction: Proceed slowly out of the hatch, raise your hands above your head, and identify yourself."

He did so and turned around to face the familiar rust-colored bipedal droid. "I'm about ready to reduce you to scrap metal," Canderous growled.

HK-47's "eyes" flared briefly in what Canderous was sure had to be disappointment, disappointment that he couldn't shoot him. He knew the feeling.

"Amused Statement: That would be quite impossible, Mandalorian meatbag."

Canderous rolled his eyes again and shoved the droid's blaster aside. Mission came up the ladder behind him.

"What's the hold-up, Muscles?" she asked, climbing up onto the floor of the hallway.

Canderous glared in irritation at the annoying red droid. "Just another Force-be-cursed ally. What are you doing here, anyway?" he asked HK-47.

"Answer: Why I am carrying out Master's orders; helping to recover our ship. Explanation: It was necessary to divert many of the Sith soldiers from the hangar to other parts of the ship. I was merely facilitating communication between the aged meatbag and the diminutive T3 droid as the two of them attempted to slice into the main security system of this ship. Their plan was to raise many alarms in many parts of the ship so as to draw away sufficient forces from the hangar to allow us--"

"Wonderful," Canderous interrupted, shoving past the exasperating HK-47, who continued to talk as they walked down the hall toward another door.

"--stayed behind to ensure no guards manage to get behind us as we launch our attack--"

Ignoring the persistently chatting droid, Canderous opened the blast door at the end of the hall, finding himself in what looked to be a fuel depot for single fighters. It opened to the hangar on one side, and he could see Sith reinforcements streaming from the hangar in a throng to get to other parts of the ship.

Taking a rough count, he reached the conclusion that there couldn't be more than a dozen or two soldiers left in the hangar. All they needed to do was get to the _Hawk_ and use its rail guns...

Canderous stepped into plain view, lobbed an incendiary grenade at a group of Sith, and fired a burst of blaster fire across the hangar. Once he opened fire, the HK droid was quick to follow suit, finally shutting up as he went about his task with murderous glee. Sith soldiers scatted for cover as he and the droid blanketed the hangar with weapons fire.

Over the sound of his rifle, Canderous heard gruff cursing, paused for the briefest of moments to take a look back at the pile of fuel barrels where he saw the old Jedi hermit Jolee appear along with the Wookiee. Jolee's green lightsabre ignited in a flash to deflect a stray bolt of return fire from one of the Sith, preventing it from striking the combustibles just behind them.

"This wasn't the plan, Mandalorian!" Jolee yelled furiously, parrying several more blaster shots with his sabre.

"It is now!" Canderous retorted, renewing his attack.

The Wookiee Zaalbar opened fire with his antiquated bowcaster, adding his fire to theirs, and for a minute, the Sith soldiers stayed behind their cover, leaving the hangar clear for the moment. Canderous quickly waved them all forward. Mission dashed for the ship, shooting the nearest Sith in the side of the head once she reached the cargo ramp. Tossing a concussion grenade for good measure, she beckoned to the rest of them.

Seeing them making it to the ship, the Sith did their best to deter the others, holding down Canderous and Zaalbar under heavy fire for several minutes. HK-47's fierce blasting, combined with some Force trickery from Jolee bought cover for the little T3 droid to roll aboard.

At last, Canderous got inside. Mission hurriedly threw the switch to close the ramp as soon he and Zaalbar were aboard, cutting off the Sith, but not before a few blaster shots ricocheted off the inner walls.

"Get to the turrets and take care of the rest," Canderous ordered Mission.

"You got it, Muscles," she responded and dashed off to get the _Ebon Hawk_'s big guns working.

As he made for the cockpit, Canderous was slowed by a scowling Jolee. "What was all that?" the old man demanded. "We had the situation under control and you turned it into a full-fledged firefight!"

Canderous brushed past the aged Jedi. "Mandalorians do not wait in the hope that the enemy will weaken themselves on their own; we take battles into our own hands."

Jolee swore.

"We were diverting their strength into other areas of the ship! It was working perfectly, until you came along!"

Canderous snorted as the sound of the _Ebon Hawk_'s turrets started up. "It seems to have worked, now don't it?" He sneered at Jolee and pushed past him into the cockpit, where he opened a channel to Kono's radio.

"Kono, the others and I have secured the ship and planted the charges. Everything's set, we're just waiting for you to finish your end of things."

* * *

"Affirmative," Kono acknowledged. "Hold the ship and maintain radio silence until further notice, we've almost reached our objective."

The bridge was near, resistance thickening. A trail of bodies was littered behind him and the others, leading from where they stood for a moment behind a blast door, preparing for the last part of their attack.

It had been inevitable that the Sith would eventually organize their security forces once they realized just what had happened. And when they did, they did so with professional speed and thoroughness. Once the four of them had gotten close, every corridor was guarded, every intersection reinforced, every blast door sealed. It had been a fierce, bloody battle to get as far as they had, just a bulkhead away from the main bridge of the Sith Interdictor.

Kono's leg stung from the strain he'd put on it, half the fingers on his right hand were numb, and his head was pounding like the hammer and anvil of an Arkanian swordsmith. In his injured state, he really was not in combat condition, but he doggedly kept on. There was no alternative. More often than was usual for him, he would fall back on the defensive and signal Juhani to cover for him. He was wary of pushing himself too far and didn't wish to test the reliability of multiple-application field healing. In his experience, when you were re-injured prematurely, the injury tended to be more debilitating than the first.

He noticed Bastila going as easy on herself as she could, as well. He could hardly blame her for not being eager to rip open the precariously-healed wounds on her chest and stomach where most of her injuries had been sustained. Such injuries as hers would take a day or two at the least to fully meld back to normal after Force healing. But they didn't have two days, they had only the now.

There was very little time before _the Leviathan_'s reactor would begin going into overload, catastrophic failure soon after that_. _By now Admiral Karath would know of the threat Kono and his companions faced, he would know the bridge was their objective, and would have concentrated as much security forces he could in its defense. Due to the lack of any other access to the bridge, a frontal assault was the only option, and also quite suicidal. There was one way, however...

Kono gripped his lightsabre tightly in his hand, feeling the hard warmth of the ancient leather under his palms and the perpetual cold of the black blade that ran parallel to the hilt, providing a hand-guard of sorts. He could still feel the essence of the sword it had once been; the mystically powerful blade of Ajunta Pall. The sword's unique attributes, he had learned, leeched strength from his opponents, and the ability had served him well on several occasions. It was one of the things keeping him from dropping in exhaustion where he stood.

He nodded to Bastila, who knew the plan. As he and Juhani lit their lightsabres and began stabbing deep into the blockading barrier, Bastila knelt on the floor, closing her eyes in concentration as she reached into the Force to call upon her battle meditation. It was their only realistic chance of success in their current state against the strength of forces they would find inside the bridge. Kono, with his head injury, was unable to draw on his own understanding of the nature of battle meditation, the technique that gave him the power Bastila so feared. Juhani was learning, but was not yet his match in combat, and Carth couldn't be trusted. Aided by Bastila's power, the three of them would have to give it everything they could muster.

Kono hoped it would be enough. Never before had he held so many doubts of his abilities or those of his allies. He was used to much better than this.

Hungrily, the blue and violet blades bit into the armored doors, carving hot, glowing swathes through the thick durasteel. The headache in Kono's head beat almost as steadily as the humming of his sabre as he forced his arms to push the blade deeper and harder. The pain in his mind forced his vision to focus on the one thing before him; his blade. In that moment, his lightsabre was the only thing that existed. It was a part of him, and he a part of it. He had only one purpose: cut. That one thing meant everything, it was his hunger, his power. That purpose filled him with a deadly need.

It was only once he had cut completely through the blast door that he realized he was feeling Bastila's power at work, full-strength, within him. Alongside the pain, it focused everything into a single, irrefutable drive to slay and kill his enemies.

Heavy durasteel plates fell away, and the way to the bridge was open. Juhani was first through, spinning her blue lightsabre blindingly fast to turn away the first burst of blaster fire from the assembled Sith soldiers inside. Kono plunged through after her, setting his sights on the closest Sith, the first to die. He swung his lightsabre for the neck of his enemy. There was a flash, a sound, and a blaster bolt ricocheted off his blade, bounced back and killed the Sith in front of him before his sabre even made it all the way.

Kono turned, targeting more enemies. They were all over the bridge, bodies without faces in their silver and red armor. Carth opened fire with a pair of hand blasters, pinning down several at the far end of the bridge, where Kono could see the crouched form of Admiral Karath taking cover with two big Sith bodyguards.

As he spun and sliced into another defenseless Sith, Kono sensed a blaster bolt flying for his head.

Time seemed to slow. He could sense exactly where in the air was the projectile; how fast it was moving; how far from him it was; its exact trajectory. He started to bring his lightsabre about in a deflection, slanting the blade at the perfect oblique angle to make the blaster shot do his bidding. He knew just where it would go once it hit his sabre.

Abruptly, time snapped back into motion. The red bolt slammed into the glowing purple and black blade of his lightsabre, taking a wild ricochet. It sailed across the room and tore into the shoulder of Admiral Karath, dropping him to the deck.

Most of the Sith were just weeds, worthless soldiers with more faith in their blasters than they had sense in their heads. They fell before his and Juhani's lightsabres with ease. Kono had no strategy for how he dispatched them, he just recklessly threw himself forward, turning everything from the speed of his blade to the incessant pounding in his head into a weapon. He concentrated on nothing else but the killing at hand, put his every effort into finding deadly openings.

Suddenly, almost too soon, Kono saw that the last two Sith had slid to the floor, dead, and he stood over the injured Saul Karath, ready to plunge his lightsabre into the traitorous admiral's chest.

With effort, Kono stopped himself, resisting the blood lust that had been instilled in him by Bastila's battle meditation. He would leave the admiral to Carth, if the Republic man truly had the guts to do it.

"He's all yours, Carth," Kono panted, glaring down at the admiral, who, for the first time, had the smugness erased from his face.

As the Republic pilot stalked up to his crippled enemy, Kono turned his back, making for the master computer terminal, the main objective of this whole escapade. Juhani floated to his side as he scanned the display, by all appearances ignoring the drama playing out behind him. In reality, he was paying close attention to Carth, even as he searched the computer for the docking procedures he needed to modify.

Carth had a single blaster in his hands, he gripped the weapon so tightly his knuckles were white. Every inch of his face was etched with loathing as he approached the Butcher Of Telos, who was helpless to his fury.

"Don't be a fool, Carth," Admiral Karath rasped weakly. "Malak has arrived, he will not let you live."

"I'm finished listening to you, Saul!" Carth snarled. "It's time for you to pay for all the evil you've done!" Remorselessly, he raised the blaster.

"Carth, no!" Bastila yelled frantically, dashing onto the bridge. "Don't give in to hate, don't become what you despise!"

Carth glared at her. "What is this, Bastila? Do you know the things this man has done? The millions he killed? The pain he's brought me and countless others? This is justice."

"Not this way, Carth," Bastila pleaded. "Killing him won't ease the pain. There is no justice when you kill for revenge. This is the path to the Dark Side, don't give in to it!"

"There's never going to be trial for Saul! This is the closest to justice that'll ever be served, and the most he can ever pay for all the evil he's done!

"Carth, don't."

The both of them were interrupted by a scoffing laugh from the admiral. "As self-righteous as ever, I see. I'm disappointed in you, Carth."

Carth cast the wounded man a withering glare. "I don't care what you think."

"Of course, because it's only what you think that matters. Just like always you are too stubborn to consider the truth, Carth. You decided that Telos was a bitter act of cowardly betrayal, but you never knew what truly lay behind my decision." Karath's smirk had partially returned. "You think, therefore it must be, that I bombed Telos out of a depraved need to please Darth Malak. You were wrong, as you were wrong about so many other things. I did what I did to save lives."

"Liar!" Carth screamed with such naked hatred that Bastila took a step back from him. "You killed my wife and son! You killed everything I know!"

"So absorbed are you in your own narrow, insignificant little losses that you've blinded yourself to any other possibilities. Just like you've always done, Carth." Karath's smirk grew wider; he was in control now. "Malak would have destroyed Telos without my help, and he would have blazed a burning trail through the galaxy as he did so, a campaign of such horror and destruction that you can barely imagine. Telos was a necessary sacrifice; one world to save dozens of others. Besides," his face grew as smug as ever, "just who are you to judge me? After all, Darth Revan himself is your own companion."

Carth stiffened, his eyes widened in disbelieving horror. Bastila closed her eyes in resignation. Juhani turned her head suddenly toward the admiral.

"Ha!" Karath exclaimed victoriously. "Did you never even suspect--"

Carth's patience was at an end. Cutting off Karath's words, he put a pair of shots in the admiral's chest.

Bastila had not moved. Juhani watched anxiously.

Kono noted everything in the back of his mind for the moment. After he had finally found what he was looking for, deactivated the magnetic locks on the _Ebon Hawk_, he turned back to his three companions.

"I should have guessed sooner!" Carth growled at him. "Bastila it's true, isn't it?"

"Of course it is," Kono answered.

Bastila went white. "You knew?" she asked fearfully.

Kono nodded. "Since Korriban."

She was too shocked to respond.

After a moment, Carth broke the silence.

He laughed. It was an unpleasant, almost demented laugh, not at all a pleasant sound. "It's all been a lie, then. From day one, this has all been one lie after another. I guess it makes sense. Can't trust Jedi to tell you the truth, only lies."

"Carth, it's not what you think!" Bastila said in desperation. "I'll explain, but not here! We have to escape before Malak arrives!"

"He's already here," Kono announced in a grim voice, indifferent to Carth's raging turmoil and Bastila's panicked desperation. He'd known the truth for quite some time - it was hardly news to him - and they had much more pressing problems. "We'll have to play catch-up later, Carth. We do not have time for this right now."

He looked to Juhani, saw conflict in her golden eyes. "Malak's vessel is here. We need to go. Are you with me, Juhani?" She reluctantly nodded. He looked at Bastila and Carth. "Are you with me?"

"I promise I'll explain everything once we're back on the ship," Bastila pledged, more to Carth than Kono. "Carth, please, just trust me a little while longer."

"Until we get out of here," Carth compromised. "Then I'm watching my own back."

"Good," Kono grunted. "Then let's go."

Carth scowled. "After you."

Kono strode resolutely off the bridge, followed tentatively by Juhani, then Bastila. Carth hesitated for a moment, fingering his blaster. His eyes were intently set on Kono's retreating figure, considering how easy it would be to finish what the Jedi had started.

Carth started to raise the blaster.

Kono stopped. "Carth, if you make that move, it'll be your last."

"Give me a reason not to!" Carth shouted, his voice wild.

"My identity doesn't change what we have to do. If Malak isn't stopped billions more will die needlessly."

"It's not that simple!" Carth roared.

"Carth, if you wish to argue this out now then you are welcome to stay behind while this ship explodes. Every second you waste with your stubborn, selfish arguments is a second lost. Now come or you're staying behind!" The threat was deliberate. Carth wasn't responding to reason, he had to be bludgeoned along.

"I want all the answers when we get back to the ship. All of them," Carth demanded.

Kono sighed in irritation. "Fine! We really have to go!"

* * *

Emergency alarms were blaring by the time they reached the hangar deck. It signaled one thing: a critical overload of the ship's main reactor. The _Leviathan_ could blow any minute.

Kono's headache was worse. He knew he was going to have to do something about it once he got back to the _Hawk_, it was becoming a serious impediment to his mental stamina and ability to draw upon the Force. Letting any of the Jedi heal the damage to his skull was out of the question now, as he could not possibly trust them not to tamper with his mind. Like so much else, he would have to shoulder this one himself. But that was fine by him; having Malak's "help" had gotten them embroiled in this war in the first place. He would have to do as he had always done, and deal with his troubles on his own.

Bastila still had not regained her color from learning Kono knew the truth. There would be time enough for explanations later, and despite her emotionless mask of a face, he could tell she was not going to relish the explaining. Kono could almost hear her mind putting small fragments together into a cohesive whole, collecting little hints and admissions she had thought nothing of at the time. She would realize that this was what she suspected all along, but her mind had cloaked her suspicion in benign fancies and vague visions.

She might get over the shock, but Carth was another matter entirely. No one had said anything since the bridge, but Carth's silence reeked of bitterness and rage. There was hardly a shred of rationality left in Carth's mind, nothing but the anger he directed at Kono simply for who he was, not for what he'd done.

Juhani was an interesting melange of opposing emotions. There was the inevitable resentment for everything attributed to the name Revan, but also an odd sense of sympathy. Perhaps Juhani thought that since she'd been on the path of the Dark Side before, she could understand how he might feel. She could not, but Kono appreciated the sentiment nonetheless.

He didn't see the Force like most everyone else, didn't see "the Light" and "the Dark." He saw it as it truly was; a continuum as infinite as the universe, as limitless as life itself, and defined solely by those who wielded it. It had no personality, no will of its own. The Force was neither good nor evil; it simply existed. The dark side was in the mind, the Force was just a tool.

Juhani had been an adolescent screaming at her parents. Kono was fighting a war without mercy.

But still, of the three she had so far been the most accepting. Bastila and Carth, on the other hand, were skirting between denial and horror.

None of it really mattered to Kono, nor did it change what had to be done, not in the grand scale or in the more immediate sense. If they stayed, they died, it was as simple as that. The ship around them was rumbling ominously as they made their way through the corridors that would lead them back to the hangar and the _Ebon Hawk_. They were tantalizingly close to freedom.

"Stop," Bastila said suddenly as they came to a bulkhead door. Kono frowned at her. "Something is not right," she worried.

Carth checked the blasters in his hands, fidgeting nervously. Kono and Juhani both kept tight grips on their weapons.

The door opened.

Bastila gasped and took a step back. "Darth Malak..."

_To be continued..._


	5. Chapter 5

Carth couldn't hold back. The instant the door opened, he fired off a salvo of shots from his blaster, yelling incoherently. The Sith Lord had no trouble deflecting the blaster bolts with his red lightsabre, and chuckled maniacally as he lashed out at Carth with a Force pulse that knocked him back several yards, sending the blasters flying from his hands.

The metal contraption covering what was left of Malak's mouth sounded forth in a soulless drone, an artificial voice not unlike two cinder blocks grinding together.

"I hope you weren't expecting to escape, Bastila. I have gone to far too much trouble obtaining you to let you slip away from me now." Bastila tightened her hands around the hilt of her lightsabre as Malak leered at her.

"And you, Revan, don't think I haven't been looking forward to this reunion. Ever since I learned you had somehow survived my attack, I have been waiting for the day I could finish what I started then. When I finally kill you, I will at last have proven that I am the master and true Lord of the Sith!"

Kono rolled his eyes at Malak's typical monologue. One thing he vividly remembered about his former apprentice was that he did dearly love to make over-inflated and long-winded speeches of his own greatness and superiority. He seemed to think it somehow made up for the fact that most often, in reality, he fell far short of his lofty appraisal of himself.

Malak was an opportunist rather than a skilled military man or strategist. He was technically not the most dangerous sabre master who had ever lived, but it was his brute strength and ruthless opportunism that had catapulted him into such prominence amongst the Sith.

Taking him on as his apprentice had been one of Kono's worst mistakes. Even before his slide into madness, an event Kono could only faintly recall, Malak didn't possess the complexity of thought necessary for planning and carrying out intricate large-scale operations. The only thing his demented mind could put forth as a goal was senseless destruction of anything and everything.

Playing Malak's game, Kono fired back, trying to goad him into making a mistake, thus giving Kono the advantage. "You were never able to best me, Malak, that was why you resorted to such a cowardly, foolish, stupid tactic. You proved nothing about yourself by destroying my ship. You even failed to kill me. I would imagine you must have yearned for this day, if only to repair your injured pride by attempting to kill me face to face."

"I am far more powerful than you have ever been, Revan! I am no longer the apprentice, I am the master! I am the Dark Lord of the Sith!" Malak punctuated his speech by throwing a sudden bolt of Force lightning at Kono.

Instantly, Kono brought up his hand, with his open palm deflecting the blast of lightning into the ceiling above. His violet lightsabre ignited a moment later as he spun the hilt in his other hand, bringing it into a quick guard to turn aside Malak's unsophisticated frontal attack. He shot a small blast of his own to the floor at Malak's feet, causing the Sith to jump back a pace and give Kono room to maneuver.

He clashed his sabre against Malak's, and was momentarily surprised by the demonic strength with which Malak shoved him back. He was more physically powerful than any other foe Kono could ever remember fighting, and that made him supremely dangerous.

Beside Kono, Bastila and Juhani leaped into the battle. Malak handily shoved them back by his sheer strength with the lightsabre. There was no great amount of sophistication to his technique, just deadly force. Instead of being swamped by the three of them, Malak was able to hold them off by using the relatively narrow confines of the hall to single out his enemies and repel them one at a time. Kono was repeatedly frustrated by landing a blow or two against his insanely powerful guard only to be denied a second chance when either Bastila or Juhani's body blocked him.

Whenever Carth reckoned he had even half a shot, he would let loose with a light salvo from his blasters that Malak would then easily block, forcing his three opponents to deflect the re-purposed blaster fire lest it hit them. Though they were forcing him to give ground, Malak was not seriously threatened by their uncoordinated attacks. Juhani was already all but exhausted, Bastila drained from the torture, and Kono's relentless head injury not aiding his efforts.

Malak suddenly hit Kono with a Force blast that propelled him down a side hall, isolating him from the others. A blast door sealed itself in Carth and Juhani's faces, further dividing the already-splintered group. Having singled her out, Malak seized Bastila with the Force.

Winded, hoping not to have broken any ribs, Kono tried to struggle to his feet as Malak hurled Bastila against the wall of the dimly-lit corridor again and again. The wall panels buckled when she hit, and Bastila let out a scream of pain as the front of her robes suddenly bloomed with fresh blood while she slid to the floor.

Not content, Malak grabbed her by the throat with one hand, lifted her up and threw her down with all his strength, nailing her with a devastating Force blast as she hit. Propelled by both Malak's physical strength and the fury of his Force attack, Bastila impacted the floor with such force that it broke under her, tearing a hole clean through to the next deck beneath them. She landed amidst the debris, unable to move. Bones were broken, her precariously healed wounds torn open.

Satisfied, Malak turned his attention to Kono.

As never before, Kono entrusted his life to his blade. He lunged forward on the attack, making solid contact that was easily repulsed by Malak's red sabre. Even through the dull haze of the pain in his mind, he felt a reassuring energy in the hilt of his lightsabre, renewing his strength with each blow. He threw himself forward with every ounce of power he could muster, trying every trick he knew as he skirted the edge of the small crater where Bastila had fallen.

Malak was too strong an opponent for Kono to best in his current state, but he had no choice but to keep pressing the attack, for to relinquish the initiative would mean sure death. Constantly dogged by the persistent distraction of the resounding pain in his head, Kono was unable to achieve the totality of focus that he so relied on, and was forced to fight on Malak's terms, whether he held the initiative or not. He couldn't press his advantage of being more technically skilled than Malak, and his physical exhaustion was just barely countered by the energy he leeched from his adversary.

More than once, Kono found himself thrown to the ground, countering desperately to keep from being run through by Malak's merciless red blade. He threw caution to the winds, trying everything he knew to gain the upper hand against his stronger opponent. Red and violet lightsabres whistled and hummed, purred and screeched as they met each other time and time again in violent clashes, each stinging report sending a shock wave through Kono's head.

The muscles in his arms and chest burned with the effort, his legs were heavy and sluggish, every movement felt like it could be his last gasp of exhaustion. His head hurt so much he could barely think. He was running virtually on autopilot, repeating the same unimaginative attack forms and parrying techniques because he couldn't think of what else to do. He had to keep fighting, had to keep his failing body going, or death was assured.

As Kono's leaden limbs tried valiantly to keep his violet and black lightsabre between his body and Malak's red blade, he could almost feel himself slipping, making sloppy mistakes, fatigue overtaking him.

One mistake was all it took. Unable to think clearly, unable to move fast enough or with enough strength, Kono failed to block a cutting attack from Malak. The hissing red blade seared a deep wound through the side of Kono's chest. It missed his heart and skirted off the ribs, but was more than enough to take him down.

Kono collapsed to the floor, overcome with sheer physical exhaustion. He still held his lit lightsabre loosely in his hand, but couldn't force his arms to raise it even the slightest bit.

Malak reached down, grabbed Kono by the throat, and hurled him against the wall. Kono grunted in pain, feeling a rib crack as he impacted, but still clung tenaciously to his lightsabre. For a moment, he lay on the floor, trying to catch his breath and muster one last trick.

When Malak grabbed him again, Kono seized the opportunity and hit him with as large a Force pulse as he could manage. The Sith instinctively threw up a shield, and the blast reflected back to hit Kono, tearing him from Malak's grasp and sending him flying backwards through the corridor. His limp body sailed over the crater, hit the floor with a dull thud, and slid several meters down the hall, closer to the sealed blast door.

It had taken everything Kono had left. He could barely lift his head to look down the corridor at the door Carth had somehow cracked open wide enough to stick his arm through, blaster extended. He took a few wild shots which Malak easily blocked. Kono could hear the desperate sounds of him and Juhani straining against the door, trying to open it further. But the stubborn door refused to yield, and fought them every bit of the way, grinding open ever so slowly.

Malak laughed maniacally. "How do you do it, Revan? How is it you so easily inspire such loyalty in your friends?"

Had Kono not been so winded, he would laughed himself. Carth could certainly not be called 'loyal' since learning the truth. Malak was a fool.

"Finally you are at my mercy," Malak declared triumphantly. "Now, I will finish what I started by firing upon your ship and allowing the Jedi to capture you. It will be my greatest accomplishment to kill you by my own hand."

Malak started toward him.

Kono glanced back toward the stuck door and for an instant met Juhani's eyes. They both knew there was no way they could make it in time. He spied his lightsabre hilt lying a few feet farther down the hall, out of his reach. He nearly blacked out trying to pull it to him with the Force.

He had nothing left with which to fight for his life; nothing but fire in his eyes and hate in his heart.

Malak took another step down the corridor, toward Kono's helpless form.

A yellow lightsabre suddenly erupted out of the jagged hole in the floor. It hovered in midair a moment, then launched itself at Malak, its double blades spinning wildly as it tore down the hall at him. The Sith was taken by such utter surprise that he staggered back several steps to strike down the phantom weapon.

Kono watched with unblinking eyes as Darth Malak sliced the hilt in two. Still active, the two halves fell to the floor, only to skitter back toward the hole in the floor, where they were grasped in the waiting hands of Bastila. The wounded Jedi had somehow dragged herself over the edge of the gaping crater she'd made being hurled into the floor by Malak.

One of her arms was bent at an unnatural angle, she was covered in dust and debris from the fall, and every inch of her plundered Dark Jedi robes were soaked in blood, leaving thick red stains on the floor beneath her. One of her knees was swollen and twisted. Through incredible force of will, she struggled to her feet, limping upright.

"This isn't over, Malak!" she cried, flinging one of her mini-sabres at him. Instead of flying straight for him, it spun vertically along the ceiling, tearing open electrical conduits and eviscerating the pale red light fixtures. Showers of sparks and hot metal cascaded down around Darth Malak, further distracting him.

Bastila turned back to look at him. Her neck was red with blood. "Run, I'll hold him off!"

Kono recognized the flare of desperation in her eyes; it blazed beneath a curtain of pain. He nodded slightly and tried to move his leaden limbs. He groaned in pain when he tried to raise his shoulders to claw forward on his hands and knees. Things were broken, out of place, torn, and otherwise traumatized. He had no idea how Bastila could even remain conscious after the beating she'd taken, much less stand and fight.

"No, Bastila, he's too strong!" Carth had muscled the door open wide enough to force his head and shoulder through. He saw what Bastila was doing.

"This is more important than me, Carth!" Bastila turned away and staggered forward, gripping one hand gripping her single yellow blade, the other hanging limply at her side. "Get Kono out of here!" she yelled. "There is more to him than you yet know! Save him!"

Bastila plunged through the falling stream of sparks and was lost to Kono's sight.

"No!" Carth screamed after her. They heard the sound of lightsabres clashing.

Feeling like he were carrying the weight of an entire Sith cruiser on every limb, Kono dragged himself a few feet toward Carth. The struggle for each and every inch of ground was the hardest thing Kono had done in his life. He was nearly blinded by the pain, the only thing in his sight the one thing he could focus on; his lightsabre.

His lungs burned when he couldn't get enough air from using his strength to claw forward instead of the effort of breathing. His pathetically slow pace came to a standstill every few seconds by his need for breath. When he finally closed his fingers around his lightsabre, felt the ancient tooled leather under his palm and the black steel enclosing his fist, Kono could go no further. He could hardly think beyond the heaviness of his limbs and the overpowering pain pounding through his whole body.

As he lay collapsed on the floor, he felt a slender arm take him around the waist and heave him up to be carried under a shoulder. Kono barely recognized Juhani carrying him, squeezing his heavy body through the malfunctioning door and into the hallway beyond.

The last thing he saw before losing consciousness completely was Carth's livid face.

* * *

"Help me carry him, Carth!" Juhani pleaded with the Republic pilot. He was ignoring her. "Carth!" she called again.

He turned a dead look to her. "We have to go back for Bastila," Carth protested. He gestured angrily to Kono's unconscious body draped over Juhani's shoulder. "She shouldn't have to die for _him_."

The Cathar, though intensely conflicted in her feelings toward Kono since the truth had been revealed, was offended by the summary manner in which Carth was rejecting him. He was acting as if one piece of knowledge should overturn everything they had accomplished--everything Kono had accomplished on this mission. Despite having only worked to the furthering of the mission, Kono had been instantly vilified by Carth.

And now, the Republic man wished to strip the meaning from Bastila's sacrifice by throwing them all back into the face of danger when she had warned them to escape.

Juhani gritted her teeth and hissed at him. "Bastila sacrificed herself so we could get away. Put aside your selfish thoughts for a moment and honor that sacrifice!" Carth swallowed at the anger in her voice, the fire in her eyes. Never before had she been so displeased with him.

"Now help me carry him!" she snapped. "We have not heard the entire account, and I sense there is more to it than what lies on the surface. Reserve your self-righteous judgment, Carth, until the rest of the facts are known."

Sullenly, Carth turned away from the door and did as he was told, carefully avoiding meeting Juhani's blazing eyes as he helped carry Kono's heavy form. "Okay," he grumbled, "I'll help for now. But he's got some explaining to do."

"That is all I ask, Carth."

They moved as fast as they could carrying Kono between them. Loud bass rumbling and shudders gripped the ship, making it seem like they were deep in the belly of an enormous beast, one that was rattling itself to pieces around them. Neither Juhani nor Carth knew exactly how much time they had before the ship was vaporized from the catastrophic reactor overload, but both knew they had to be gone sooner rather than later.

As much as she could, Juhani diverted some of her waning strength to trickle restorative Force energy into Kono, to at least keep his injuries from worsening. She couldn't spare the effort to heal him outright; dragging him was even more of a task than she would have thought and she was tiring fast, even with Carth's help. Several times she nearly lost her balance as the ship rocked and shook with stress. Once even they were passed by a group of panicked Sith soldiers running for their lives. They paid the three of them no mind in their mad rush to reach the lifepods, for which Juhani was grateful.

It seemed an eternity before they finally reached the hangar where waited the rust-colored _Ebon Hawk_, its cargo ramp invitingly open. Dragging Kono between them, Juhani and Carth staggered aboard. Just inside, they were met by Jolee and Canderous.

"What happened? Where's Bastila?" Jolee asked quickly as the tired pair laid Kono down on the floor of the garage.

"Later," Carth mumbled. "We have to get this ship moving, now!" With not another word, he dashed for the cockpit.

As the cargo ramp closed, Juhani beckoned for Canderous to help her carry Kono to the medical bay.

"What happened?" the Mandalorian asked in turn.

"Darth Malak," was all Juhani had to say. Canderous raised his eyebrows and urgently took Kono under his shoulders while the Cathar grasped his ankles and they awkwardly lugged him into the medbay as Jolee buzzed around them, warning them incessantly not to do any further damage to Kono's injuries.

In less than a minute, the _Hawk_ began moving, threatening to toss them around the cabin as Carth brought the ship about in a single lurching motion and gunned the engines, rocketing out of the Sith hanger at nearly the _Hawk_'s peak sub-light speed.

After strapping Kono down to the medical table to keep him from being thrown around, Juhani quickly made it into the cockpit, where Carth was wrestling with the controls.

"What is happening?" she asked.

Carth cursed loudly before answering, pointed with the wrong finger at the cockpit windshield. "There's another frakking Sith cruiser out there! I'm guessing it's Malak's, and they've got a weapons lock on us!"

"Can't you do anything about it?"

He swore again; louder this time. "Curses, woman! I'm doing everything I can just to stay in one piece so we can make the jump to hyperspace! If you want to help, shut up and let me fly!"

Had the situation not been so desperate, Juhani would have delivered a stinging rebuke to Carth's crude behavior, but as it was settled for a glare to the back of his head because she knew he was essentially correct; there was nothing she could do.

A series of impacts shook the ship as a squadron of Sith fighters swooped in from Malak's vessel. Juhani gripped the back of the co-pilot's seat to keep her balance as Carth yelled into the intercom at Canderous to "get his ass on the turrets." Literally in seconds, the roar of the _Hawk_'s cannons could be heard throughout the ship.

As one by one the fighters disappeared from the sensor screen and the impacts on the ship's shields grew more infrequent, Carth swung the nose of the _Ebon Hawk_ around, heading for open space and giving them a good view of the stricken _Leviathan_ out the cockpit windshield.

The Sith Interdictor was in its death throes. A series of staccato explosions rippled along the length of the ship's spine, tearing through the thick gray armor like a hammer through a sheet of foil. Its engines were misfiring, causing it to drift crookedly through space like an injured beast limping on a bad leg as it burned. Malak's cruiser had wisely backed off from the lamed predator, anticipating the searing explosion to come.

The stars were just beginning to stretch as Carth roared in victory at a brilliant flash of orange-white light erupting from the heart of the _Leviathan_, incinerating the mighty ship in one enormous blast.

As the shock wave shot toward them, space turned white.

* * *

Carth sat back in his seat, sighing in relief and resignation and staring unfeeling at the continuum of hyperspace before him. He could finally shift mental gears, throttle back on the adrenaline and think again. There were problems, lots of possible solutions, and even more unanswered questions all demanding his attention. He felt betrayed, confused, and terrified at the same time, and with great effort, forced himself to consider each feeling as a soldier.

He'd been here - been betrayed - before. He could handle it.

But if Kono was Revan...

"What are we doing?" he asked into the silence.

"Carth?" Juhani stared quizzically at his question.

"What are we doing, Juhani? More to the point, what are we supposed to do? If Kono's Revan, good Force, do you have any idea how bad this is?"

"We do not know everything yet, Carth. Bastila warned us that there was more that we do not know."

"Do we really need to know anything else? What if he's been lying to us this whole time? Who knows what damage he might have done." Carth heaved a long sigh. "But it's not like I can just kill him to make our problems go away. Somehow, I don't think that would solve anything."

Juhani raised her eyebrow. "You wanted to."

"I wasn't thinking straight. I was just so angry with Saul that that was all I could think about. And I do know one thing: I am not going to let another Saul happen." He clenched his fists. "I don't know what to do, but I think the Republic will."

As Carth reached for the communications panel, Juhani's hand shot out lightning-fast and stopped him. She leaned in close to him, suddenly threatening. "You will do no. Such. Thing," she whispered. Her eyes were smoldering with menace.

Carth gulped and tried to edge away from her quietly furious visage. "We can't keep going on like this, Juhani! Kono's a threat, whether you like it or not! I know killing him may not be the answer, but he still needs to be dealt with. This mission is too important for us to risk him betraying us."

"Right now, Carth, you are the largest threat to our mission," Juhani retorted.

"What!"

The Cathar frowned sternly. "What do you suppose will happen the moment the Republic learns of Kono's true identity? They will demand an immediate trial and execution. Kono will be dead, Carth, and no hope will remain of finding the Star Forge. Bastila's sacrifice will have been for nothing. I cannot allow that to happen."

Carth snapped his mouth shut. She was right, he realized. He hated to admit it, but they couldn't get rid of Kono, at least not yet. Juhani was absolutely correct; the Republic wouldn't care about some vague Jedi reasoning - Force knew they'd had enough of that - and would immediately declare Kono an enemy of the state. The mission would be over. Malak would continue on, and eventually crush any and all Republic opposition.

"But if he's Darth Revan..." he protested, not even sure what he meant.

"Carth, we have no choice," Juhani said, almost pleadingly. "We don't know everything. Please, give him the chance he gave me."

* * *

Kono was awake an hour later. Jolee and Juhani had laboriously applied kolto bandages to his head and healed his massive internal bleeding and cracked ribs with the Force. Juhani now knew why he wouldn't let anyone attempt to heal his head wound with the Force; he was afraid they might alter him further.

She had so far kept quiet about the truth, as she had also convinced Carth, citing that Kono should be the one to tell everyone else. He didn't need to fear either her or Jolee attempting any such thing. Mind altering was far beyond her limited knowledge, and if she tried she was more likely to kill him than accomplish anything productive.

Groaning from his persistent headache, Kono sat up on the tiny cot in the medical bay. His gaze found Carth standing nearby.

"Status report," he demanded in a voice that betrayed his dizziness.

"The _Leviathan_ was destroyed and we made it into hyperspace. We're on course for Manaan."

"Good job."

Carth nodded wordlessly at Kono's acknowledgment.

"Did the ship suffer any damage?"

"Just to the shields. But we can fix that easy."

"Good."

There was a long moment of silence as neither man wanted to broach the inevitable next subject. Finally, Carth did. "Juhani talked me into waiting as long as I have. So are you going to tell the others, or should I?"

Kono got to his feet, swaying a little as he tried to find his balance. "No. I'll do it. We've got to lay this matter to rest right now."

Minutes later, everyone was back in the main hold. Bastila's absence was not lost on anyone. Neither Carth nor Juhani had elaborated beyond "she didn't make it," leaving everyone in the dark regarding the fate of the young Jedi who was supposed to be in charge of their whole mission.

"Kono!" Mission exclaimed at seeing him. "What's going on? What happened on that ship?"

Carth looked expectantly at Kono as if to say, 'If you don't talk, I will.'

"We ran into Darth Malak," Kono began, simply. "Bastila made a choice to save us all and fought him off in order to give us a chance to escape."

"You mean she's--she's dead?" Mission's voice quivered.

"Bah! Malak won't kill her," Jolee pronounced. "He's too interested in her powers for that. If he can turn her to the Dark Side, then his final victory over the Republic is all but guaranteed."

"Or she and Malak could both have been killed in the explosion," Carth offered.

Kono shook his head. "I very much doubt Malak was aboard when the _Leviathan_ blew." He hesitated. "And I would have felt it had Bastila died." For an instant, doubt passed across Kono's face, but was quickly replaced with stoic resolve.

"There's something else, as well. Something I can't keep secret any longer, because it's passed out of my hands. But understand when I say that this knowledge can't leave this ship." There was another nearly imperceptible moment of indecision, and then he simply said it. "I am Darth Revan."

Silence.

Jolee broke the ice. "Well, of course you are!"

Kono narrowed his eyes at the old man's surprising statement. "You knew?"

Jolee chuckled. "You don't get to be as old as I am without learning to pick up on subtle hints and clues. You were full of them. Besides, you have this air about you that's unmistakable. It's not at all that hard for me to believe you're Revan."

"What? How?" Mission blurted.

"We don't know, Mission," Carth answered. "Bastila never got a chance to explain. But apparently, Kono's known since Korriban."

Mission's eyes grew even wider, and even Jolee was taken by surprise.

"What happened?" the Twi'lek girl asked again.

Kono shrugged. "Honestly, Mission, I'm not entirely sure. A Sith spirit and an ancient tablet gave me inklings, but what it was that opened my mind to the truth I still don't know."

Suddenly, Juhani, who had been staying quiet, inhaled sharply. "The sword..." she whispered. "It was the sword."

"What? Which sword?" Jolee asked.

"The sword of Ajunta Pall," Kono answered. "He gave it to me. It has special properties, not the least of which is its curse. No one but I can touch it, or it will try to devour that person, as Bastila discovered." He frowned. "I'd never thought that it might have been what triggered the knowledge. I suppose it's entirely possible, given its connection to Ajunta's spirit."

"So what do you remember?" Mission asked.

"To tell you the truth, Mission, not much," Kono answered simply, his tone flat. "I remember that Malak is an ass, that I used to like that awful canned Firaxa caviar, and the serial numbers of a few Republic soldiers who died on my first day of the war, and things like that. But not a whole lot more."

"Oh, well in that case, I don't think we have a problem," Mission declared.

Carth gaped. "What do you mean we don't have a problem?" he asked incredulously.

"Well if he doesn't remember anything about being Revan, then he's not really him anymore. He is who he is now, right? Does it matter that he has a few flashes every now and then?"

"Of course it matters, Mission," Carth insisted. "How do we know the memories won't come flooding back? How do we know when the man in charge of this mission suddenly becomes someone else behind our backs?" He threw up his hands. "We don't!"

"Carth," Juhani interrupted, "it is not as if we have many other choices. There is but this one course offered us, we cannot turn back."

"But he's been lying to us!" Carth protested. He turned to Kono. "Why?"

Kono shrugged wearily in resignation. "It was a secret best kept hidden. If I had told you, would you have even believed me? It doesn't change what we have to do. I won't ask you to trust me, Carth, since you obviously have no intention of doing so and I can't really blame you. But I do ask you to honor Bastila's sacrifice. We're one map away from determining the location of the Star Forge and the ultimate seat of Malak's power. She gave us this chance, the only one we're ever going to have of stopping Darth Malak."

"Well, I can't speak for Carth," Jolee said, "but I'm not here to judge you. I was afraid knowing the truth might push you over the edge, but that doesn't seem to be what's happened to you. And you're right; stopping Malak is what's important. You seem to have the best chance of succeeding as anyone ever has."

Mission raised her hand. "We're with you too, Kono." She looked to her Wookiee companion. "Right, Big Z?"

Zaalbar nodded his huge head. "_I agree with Mission; who you are is what is important, not who you were._"

A slight smile cracked Kono's face. "I'm glad to hear it. Canderous, you've been silent. What are your thoughts?"

The Mandalorian gave Kono an incredulous look. "You were one of the greatest warriors and most worthy adversaries my people have ever fought, Revan. It is my great honor and privilege to follow you. Wherever this fight takes you, I'm with you, Revan. You have my word."

"I, too, Kono," declared Juhani. "Revan is not who you are, for Revan would never have done the things you have done. You saved me from the Dark Side, and you did everything in your power to save Bastila from Malak. I believe in you."

Kono smiled again, leaning his hands down on the table in the middle of the room, hanging his head in dull pain. The headache was starting to bother him again.

"Well, Carth?"

The Republic pilot's face was a picture of turmoil. "I told you this was nothing personal, and it still isn't. The others seem to trust you, but I remember having the exact same total confidence in Saul, and look what happened; he betrayed me. I'll go along with this, Kono, because it's obvious none of us really have any choice in the matter. If you can't stop Malak then no one can. But don't think for a moment I'm going to let my guard down. I'm not going to let you betray the Republic."

Hardness returned to Kono's face. "Well, I'm glad we were able to straighten these things out. The mission has to take priority. Manaan is the last."

* * *

Kono lay down heavily on his bunk, trying to ignore the constant pounding in his skull. The knock to the back of his head was still a major inconvenience, producing the king of all migraines. His ribs were sore and his knee occasionally twinged with sharp pain. Healed though most of the injuries were, his body was protesting the unnatural healing methods that had been used. Kolto only restored tissue eighty percent of the way; if the body didn't have a chance to do its own healing, old wounds ripped open easily. Force healing was only a little better, but had the same basic problem.

He needed time to let his body heal on its own, time he simply did not have. The few days it would take to get to Manaan would have to be enough. He'd get as much bed rest as he could and hope for the best.

In a way, all his horrible injuries had been a good thing for Kono. They reminded him that he was not invincible, that the slightest mistake on his part could still spell death for him and everything he was working toward. Over the past few weeks, as he burned through Korriban and Kashyyyk, he'd started believe there was no way he could lose.

But he'd lost before; he'd lost everything. The encounter with the Kel-Soth was a startling reminder of his vulnerability, the gap in his armor he tried to think wasn't there, but was. As he so often told Bastila, denying reality did not bend the universe to his will. He had to accept the truth, no matter how horrible, and deal with it as best he could.

Seeing Bastila tortured, hearing those same screams all over again, and knowing it was likely happening at this very moment, was an unwelcome reminder of the time when he'd cared for someone. Caroleen was an elusive memory; he was no longer sure whether she was a part of his fabrication or his true past. Either way, she was burned into his mind so clearly that it was impossible to ignore her, especially now.

He couldn't ignore her, but he could certainly try to bury her. There was nothing to be done, Kono knew. Rescuing Bastila would be suicidal and useless, if not impossible. She was gone, destroyed, no longer a part of his life. And she was _not_ Caroleen. He had more important things to do than compare the two; both were lost.

After about an hour of lying in pain and silence, Kono sighed wearily and got from his bunk. He trudged into the garage, picked up his datapad and snagged a syringe of Mandalorian painkiller from Canderous' workbench. He brought the items back to his bunk and sat back down to read and update his logs.

There was still a lot on his mind, a lot he hadn't explained to the others. There would be time enough later, after he'd gotten some rest. They had to know now, he couldn't keep it secret if he still expected them to follow. It was a pity, since things seemed so much simpler when Malak was all they had to worry about. The ancient AI he'd plundered from the ruins on Kashyyyk had opened up an entire new dimension to his mission.

Icon warned of the return of the Destroyers, the race responsible for the downfall of the Infinite Empire. They were coming back to finish what they started twenty thousand years ago. Stopping Darth Malak was only the beginning; they needed the Star Forge on their side.

Canderous' painkiller was making Kono groggy, so he lay back on his bunk and tried to let sleep overtake him as he brooded. Unexpectedly, the last conscious thought in his mind was of Bastila. She was screaming.


End file.
